The Strange Children
by . Scribner’s, $3.50.
The strange children of this deceptively quiet novel are a handful of intellectuals, old friends, come briefly together in Tennessee at the galleried house which Sarah and Steve Lewis, writers, have fallen heir to. Their nine-year-old daughter, Lucy, serves as a pivot for the action (no scene, no dialogue is recorded that falls outside her orbit).
What develops from this impromptu reunion, amid cocktails, reminiscences of St. Tropez, charades, a Brush Arbor meeting (down the hill) of Holy Rollers, an expedition to inspect a pony, is both dramatic and subtle, and suggests without special pleading the contrast between the aimless and the consecrated life.
Miss Gordon knows her people and her Tennessee and presents them with fidelity and felicity.