Books: Hammock Romance

TALE OF THREE CITIES—D. L. Murray—Knopf ($3).

Tale of Three Cities will trouble neither the ghost of Charles Dickens nor the minds of the hammock readers, its probable audience. It is quite harmless. But like most of the other “historical novels” whose chief distinction lies in the fact that they are too heavy to be shipped by parcel post, its interest lies mainly in suggesting the question: why anyone should have taken the trouble to write it.

The three cities are, in that order, Rome, London, Paris. In Rome young Deodato is a foundling, serving, unwillingly, as a Franciscan friar. What really interests him is sculpture, a young woman who looks like a statue by Bernini, and her revolutionary brother, whom he hides in the Catacombs.

In London young Deodato, escaped from friarhood, seeks his lost identity, gets involved in a slummy, fancy piece of Victorian poisoning, yearns for the beautiful young woman, and exposes himself to some of the deadliest mid-19th-Century slang to be found in any 20th-century novel.

In Paris he encounters Napoleon III, moves through a lot of heavy research on Second Empire high life, impresses Eugénie and many of the court ladies with his masculine charm, meets the heroine again, and in three years’ seclusion becomes a fine sculptor.

The Dickensian characters in London are just a few shades more painful than the worst of Dickens; the court and military sequences in Paris suggest an expensive and uninspired Hollywood production cf War and Peace. When all is said & done the author overestimates the dignity of his romance by giving it an unsatisfactory ending.