Books: Gob Meets Girl

THE PALE BLONDE OF SANDS STREET [224 pp.)—William Chapman White—Viking ($2.50).

Pale Blonde is a neat, agreeable popular novel obviously designed to become an even neater, even more agreeable movie. Its story: an ingenuous sailor named Johnny Smith picks up with a Brooklyn-Irish girl named Katie. (Sands Street connects the Brooklyn Bridge with the Brooklyn Navy Yard.) After tinting a little of the town they retire to her room, very much in love, misunderstand each other before they can possibly worry censors, and lose each other.

Thanks to a convenient piece of Irish magic, Katie spends the rest of the book making...