Books: Cry, Children, Cry

CHILD OF OUR TIME (281 pp.)—Michel del Castillo—Knopf ($3.75).

The 20th century has supped so full of horrors that it has all but digested its conscience. The age prattles of guilt, yet rarely feels it. Man's inhumanity to man has become not so much a cause for tears as merely another Cause. To get beneath this thick-skinned indifference, a book need not be a masterpiece, but it must speak the language of the heart so guilelessly as to make sophistication a mockery and callousness a crime. Such a book, and a small masterpiece, is Michel...