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The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion.
UNDER A THOUSAND EYES—Florence B. Livingston Cosmopolitan ($2.00). Heather Davenway returns to her own particular Gopher Prairie —this time a town in Vermont—after a long absence in more metropolitan circles. She finds green trees and neighborliness—but also: gossip, spite, talebearing and the town's incessant interest in the most personal affairs of its every inhabitant. At last, however, she finds the love of "a good clean man" and the discovery of certain kindly qualities in even the most intrusively neighborly of neighbors sufficient offset to Hampton Valley's other drawbacks. A Main Street that dodges reality and lacks any brilliance of texture—but whose happy ending should delight all Babbitts.
WHAT TO TALK ABOUT—Imogene B. Wolcott—Putnam ($1.90). Post- graduate work for those whose careful perusal of The Book of Etiquette has taught them exactly what to do with an olive. What to talk about to Accountants, Brides, Clergymen, Dentists, Elderly People and so on down the alphabet. Jokes are inserted— oh, this is a sprightly manual! In fact one rapid reading should prove enough to furnish even the dumbest débutante with enough heavy verbal ammunition to entilade any sophisticated dinner table. Only—what does one talk about when one's carefully prepared list of questions dries up? And why are no links provided between the reader and Mah Jongg devotees, grandfathers, zebra-trainers?
ERIS—Robert W. Chambers—Doran ($2.00). Eris, daughter of discord, was one of the aristocratic changelings that are always being born to fictional farmers. She wanted to go on the stage. " Marry me," said E. Stuart Graydon, one of those slick city chaps, " and I'll help you." She did—only to find out on her wedding day that Graydon was a counterfeiter, wanted by the police. Graydon escaped his trailers by a hairbreadth —and Eris, thoroughly disgusted with country life in America, fled to New York. Barry Annan, young literary genius, found her penniless in Central Park, wrote up her life story for his newspaper—and then—oh, well, you know the rest—they fell in love and she made a howling success on the silver sheet and after all sorts of complications everything turned out happily. A typical Chambers novel— the perfection of timely, extremely readable trash.