Books: The Editors Like

Fiction

THE VICARIOUS YEARSby John van, Druten. (Scribner’s, $3.00.) An easy, elegant surface doesn’t obscure some shrewd and even malicious truths about literary life and temperament in this autobiographical (or is it?) novel about a beginning writer.

THE STORIES OF LIAM O’FLAHERTY. (DevinAdair, $5.00.) These sad, lyrical, powerful stories reflect the predicament of men in any society, the simplicity of the rural Irish setting to which they are largely confined only increasing the effect of the complicated overtones.

LANDSCAPE WITH DEAD DONSby Robert Robinson. (Rinehart, $3.00.) Satirical wit, the oddities of academic Oxford, and an outrageous burlesque climax more than make up for a couple of gaps in the plot of this eccentric mystery.

REMEMBER THE HOUSEby Santha Rama Rau. (Harper, $3.00.) The troubles of a Hindu girl in choosing among traditional values and new opportunities in modern India; not nearly as solemn as the summarized theme suggests, thanks to warm and spirited writing.

THE RIPENING SEEDby Colette. (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, $3.00.) Two very young lovers and their disconcerted fumbling between childhood and maturity, described with Colette’s usual delicate insight and including large chunks of the French countryside which she pictures so beautifully when she chooses.

FANTASY AND FUGUEby Roy Fuller. (Macmillan, $2.75.) A neurotic who suspects himself of murder tells of his confused attempts to clear up the situation without knowing what it really is. Off-beat suspense, and

Wild Country

JOURNEY FROM THE ARCTICby D. C. Brown. (Knopf, $4.50.) The author made a purposeless winter trip, on horseback, across northern Scandinavia. Nothing much happened, but his unaccountable project proves oddly fascinating.

THE SPIRIT OF THE WILDby Dr. William J. Long. (Doubleday, $4.00.) Observations of wild animals, conversational, unpretentious, direct, and delightful to anyone with a taste for watching, and trying to outwit, wild creatures.

HUNZAby John Clark. (Funk & Wagnalls, $5.00.) The geologist author tried to introduce medicine, new crops, woodworking, and wheels into a remote kingdom behind Pakistan. The collision between the twentieth century and the late Stone Age raises quite a dust, intellectual and political.

EXPLORING AMERICAN CAVESby Franklin Folsom. (Crown, $5.00.) Everything an amateur could want to know about caves and how to get acquainted with them is neatly covered here, with pictures, but it’s no reading for claustrophobes.