KATHERINE, by Anya Seton (589 pp.; Houghton Mifflin; $3.95).
The Plantagenets really lived it up. They dined on roast lark, ginger fritters and porcupine seethed in almond milk, and their halls were strewed with cartloads of rose petals. The Plantagenets' brides were not so hot, but their mistresses were every bit as toothsome as the ginger fritters. Such a dish was Katherine de Roet, the daughter of an obscure herald. She had scarcely settled down at the court of Edward III when she was nearly raped by a dour Saxon knight. The gay John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, later prominent in Shakespeare ("Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee"), rescued Katherine and saw her safely married to the knight. But soon John, too, was panting after her. Eventually, she presented John with four bouncing bastards, who were legitimized by King and Pope in due course, after Kate's first husband and John's other wives conveniently died. In Katherine, Author Seton (Dragonwyck, My Theodosia) has expertly laced up a busty novel of historical fact and feminine fancy that is sure to find favor among the Plantagenets of Hollywood.
MADAME DE, by Louise de Vilmorin, translated by Duff Cooper (54 pp.; Messner; $2.50), is a literary visit from the frail, salon-bred French writer whose fans think that she may succeed to Colette's place as first lady of French letters. Author de Vilmorin has a wonderful flair for wacky as well as genuine elegance, and writes with a kind of passionate superficiality rarely attempted since the courtly novel died with the French court. Madame De, already known to some U.S. moviegoers in an excellent screen version (TIME, July 26), is a high-society triangle in which a pair of diamond earrings wanders from husband to wife to jeweler to mistress to lover to wife and back to husband, evoking tinkles of high comedy and muted tragedy on the way. The story is a tiny wonder, perfect and trivial as a Japanese miniature tree.
JULI ETTA, translated by Alison Brothers (147 pp.; Messner; $3), is a contrasting companion piece from the same perfumed pen. It is a moony, brilliant bit of boy-meets-girlishness, more or less what might have happened if Stendhal had been writing for Sam Goldwyn. The ideal cast: Gary Grant, Gene Tierney and Audrey Hepburn. The plot: Tierney, a high-fashion cutie, comes for a visit at the country house of Grant, her fiancé. No sooner has she arrived than Grant discovers that Hepburn, a runaway adolescent, has parked herself on his premises. Sure that Tierney won't understand, he hides the girl in the attic. From there out, it is pie-in-the-eye farce, but with a gentle sigh to be heard, just offscreen, for the inexorable way of a maid with a man. Best of all is the fine satin cushion of language underneath the folderol.