Books: Insects Chirming

THE VARMINTS (287 pp.)—Peggy Bennett—Knopf ($2.50).

"The nights in the spring of 1939 fell with an epic quality of warm air and light-headedness and sap swimming and voluptuous dreaming. The Samsonic day lost its locks to the beguiling Deliahlike night. A dark down hued her epidermis, but the male day, with its redheaded brilliance and reeking strength, was subdued by her, and her charms held the insects chirming. . . ."

Elsewhere in this first novel by 21-year-old Peggy Bennett of Apalachicola, Fla. there is still more hair-raising prose. The story, probably more or less autobiographical, is that of three children (the varmints)...