Books: Class of 1914

No TIME LIKE THE PRESENT—Storm Jameson—Knopj ($2.50).

Margaret Storm Jameson belongs to a hard-hit generation (she calls it "the Class of 1914") and she comes from hard-bitten Yorkshire. The combination, as readers of her novels will recognize, is not one that makes for softness or cares about charm. Good if somewhat angrily honest, her stories are apt to be bitter to palates accustomed to a sugaring of the pill. In No Time Like the Present, half autobiography and half indictment of a civilization that returns to war like a dog to its vomit, there is...