Books: Fact and Fiction

THE ABODE OF LOVE (214 pp.)—Aubrey Menen—Scribner ($3.50).

Is Buntism incurable? Many people, including England's witty Irish-Indian novelist, Aubrey (The Prevalence of Witches) Menen, answer with a firm yes. They point out that 1) Buntism has attacked men and women from the beginning of recorded history, 2) there is reason to believe that Buntism is fundamental to life itself.

Buntism derives from Sergeant Matthew Bunt, a British Marine who was two years a castaway on an uninhabited Pacific islet early in the igth century. When prim Captain Overton of H.M.S. Achilles stopped by, Marine...