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Three young Parisiennes, Antoinette, Annonciade, Suzon, go for a summer vacation to Antoinette's old family house in the country. They will be alone, far from men's distractions, have a fine time. All of them are pretty. Antoinette, the leader, is too intelligent for her own happiness. Annonciade, essence of nonintellectual femininity, adores her. Suzon, Annonciade's younger sister, is a jealous little flapper with her eyes wide open. Alas for peace, three young men live near by. Two of them, André and Bertrand, are brothers, childhood friends of Antoinette's. But their guest Robert, bronzed, much-traveled civil engineer, is the rock on which feminine friendship is shattered. Realist Suzon, seeing she has no chance with Robert, contents herself with tantalizingly dangerous escapades with Bertrand, light of heart and tongue. André is hopelessly in love with Antoinette, makes love to Annonciade in order to score over her idol. Before he knows it they are engaged. When they all return to Paris together at the end of the summer Antoinette says she will follow them in a few days, stays behind by herself to try to pick up the pieces.
Simonne Ratel, journalist and scholar, has taken her M. A. in Greek and Latin at the Sorbonne. Onetime member of the editorial staff of France-Islam, of La Renaissance du Lime, of Comoedia, she has also published a book of essays, Cocktail. The adaptation of Love's Not Enough is by Joseph Collins, famed litterateur-physician.
Yiddish Dostoyevsky
THE MOTHER—Sholom Asch—Live- right ($2.50).
The Zlotnik family, Polish Jews, were not well off in their native country. Father Anshel was good at cantillating the Book of Esther but hopeless at making money.
If it had not been for Mother Suré and her genius for taking infinite pains to make ends meet somehow, their poverty would have been more unbearable than it was. When the eldest son saved his pennies and emigrated to the U. S., the Zlotniks regarded him as an emissary sent to spy out the land, waited proudly for his summons to follow him. The summons came when he had been in Manhattan long enough to earn an instalment on their steamship tickets.
The U. S. was a great shock to the Zlotniks, the filthy cellar "apartment" under the "L" a worse shock still. Mother Suré wore herself out as usual trying to make and keep a decent home. Before she died of cancer she saw many a sad change come over her beloved family: her eldest son married to a wife whose family looked down on the Zlotniks, Anshel no longer cantillating the Book of Esther, but slaving in a shirt factory, her daughter Dvoyrele living in sin with an impoverished sculptor. But Death saved her from seeing the culmination of her daughter's tragedy.
Sholom Asch, No. 1 Yiddish novelist, was born (1880) in Kutno, near Poland's Warsaw. In 1910 he came to the U. S., lived for five years on Manhattan's Staten Island. Few of his novels (Uncle Moses, Kiddush Ha-Shem) have been translated; one of his plays (God of Vengeance), though several have been produced by the Yiddish Art Theatre, Manhattan. In 1919 Sholom Asch returned to Europe, lives in Paris. Son Nathan (The Office, Love in Chartres), now in Paris, lives in Manhattan, writes in English.
Browning Without the Bounce