Books: Hardly Hopkins

BEFORE You Go (437 pp.)—Jerome Weidman—Random House ($4.95).

Many readers still remember the alcoholic hero of The Lost Weekend desperately trying to hock his typewriter to buy booze and finding the New York pawnshops closed; the shops are owned by Jews, and they are closed because it is Yom Kippur, the most important of Jewish holidays. This novel presents a similar but even more poignant dilemma. The heroine's older sister has got herself pregnant by her boss, a married man; she tries desperately to cash a check for an abortion, but finds she cannot...