Books: Money Is Truffles

THE HOUSE OF ALL NATIONS

by CHRISTINA STEAD 787 pages. Holt, Rinehart& Winston. $10.

This is a long, unfathomably static but often exhilarating novel about money. There are 104 chapters, at least as many characters, and dialogue that runs on and on like ticker tape. Money is not a particularly easy subject for fiction. Miss Stead is no Balzac or Dickens; on the other hand, she is no Louis Auchincloss either. She is, however, obviously mesmerized by money and her sharpest writing is comment about it. "Certainly I understand the class war," says a rich old countess. "We steal from the pigs:...

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