Books: Again, Arlen

LILY CHRISTINE—The Story of a Good Woman—Michael Arlen—Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

On Lily Christine's pink and black jacket is a subtitle mentioning good woman; on her title page in pink fast deflowering to purple she nevertheless promises "a romance." This for Michael Arlen of the onetime vogue is an amalgam so incongruous that one can but suspect him of a publicity trick. The suspicion is confirmed by the old sophisticated sentimentalities of style ill-matched to a heroine, beautiful though near-sighted and bespectacled, passionately devoted to her children though they visit the pages but once,...