Books: Play in Boards

SKYLARK—Samson Raphaelson—Knopf ($2).

As a playwright and screen writer, Samson Raphaelson is as good as they come. His light comedies (The Jazz Singer, Young Love, Accent on Youth) not only packed them in, critics liked them too, praised their deftness, wit, freshness. But Broadway and Hollywood are not Parnassus. Skylark, a fluffy first novel originally written as a play (serialized in the Satevepost as Streamlined Heart), last week proved that Samson Raphaelson's stuff is better on boards than in them.

The story of a neglected wife, Skylark tells how Lydia Kenyon, wife of a...