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Fiction: Recent Books: May 25, 1936

2 minute read
TIME

A HOUSE IN VIENNA—Marianne Philips—Harcourt, Brace ($2). Sentimental report of a critical day in a run-down Viennese apartment house. Prying into the personal affairs of the tenants, Author Philips clucks sympathetically over their misfortunes, smiles tenderly over their blessings. The reader may be discouraged by the lumbering archness of the style, perhaps the fault of a too rigid translation from the Dutch.

GIVE Us THIS DAY—Louis Zara-Bobbs—Merrill ($2.50). The rise and decline of a baker, told in vague, groping, pseudo-epic style. Tedious reading, relieved occasionally by an unintentionally comic passage.

SCHOOL FOR LOVE—Lorine Pruette—Doubleday, Doran ($2). Sociologist Pruette triumphantly invades the field of light fiction, with a witty, sophisticated description of Springtime in Paris and its revolutionary effect upon the morals of a conventional maiden from Tennessee.

THE DARK GREEN CIRCLE—Edward Shanks—Bobbs-Merrill ($2). Pleasant, ambling tale of polite romance, dark forces, diabolic rites, in a quiet English village. Only the most impressionable will subscribe to the publisher’s assertion that the story “Casts a Spell!”

LET THE KING BEWARE!—Honore Morrow—Morrow ($2.50). A tireless historical romancer spins out an ambitious tale of love and politics against the turbulent background of George Ill’s court on the eve of the American Revolution. For those who like to think that historical conflicts arise largely out of misunderstanding.

Non-Fiction

CONFESSION OF ANOTHER YOUNG MAN—Bravig Imbs—Plenkle-Yewdale ($2.50). Dartmouth’s bad boy, who almost a decade ago shocked Hanover by revealing his experience as butler in the home of a respected faculty member (The Professor’s Wife), turns to reminiscence of his long residence in Paris. Still an irrepressible extrovert, Author Imbs devotes most of his current opus to little anecdotes about Gertrude Stein. George Antheil and their respective circles.

UNDER THE AXE OF FASCISM—Gaetano Salvemini—Viking ($3). The case against Mussolini, forcefully presented by an exiled political scientist, now lecturing at Harvard.

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