Books: Post-Wodehouse

HARLEQUIN HOUSE—Margery Sharp—Little, Brown ($2.50).

Margery Sharp is a bright-eyed, diminutive, facetious English girl whose The Nutmeg Tree was a surprise best-seller two years ago. As a followup, Harlequin House is less surprising; it tells a bouncing, bubbling, frankly inconsequential story about giddy Lisbeth and her shiftless brother Ronny, with Lisbeth managing four men at once in a campaign to reform Ronny who had spent six months in jail for somebody else's racket.

Lisbeth's other three men include an impeccable fiancé, an amiable American whom she met on a merry-go-round, a middle-aged Londoner with...