Books: No Trespassing

THE SUDDEN GUEST (250 pp.)—Christopher La Farge—Coward-MacCann ($2.50).

“What is it, please?” asks Miss Leckton testily. The gale from the ocean is blowing harder & harder. She tries to hold down her skirts with one hand, her greying hair with the other.

“No,” she says in reply, “it is quite out of the question.” These people—whoever they are—seem to think that they can use her Rhode Island seashore estate as a casual shelter. A hurricane? What of it? This is private property.

The wind billows Miss Leckton’s dress, making her angrier still. “I can’t accommodate you here,” she shouts in the face of the storm; “you’ll find a good safe spot in Cottrellton, it is but six miles from here.” She stalks into the house, slams the door against the wind.

Miss Leckton dominates The Sudden Guest, the Book-of-the-Month Club’s dual selection for September (with Animal Farm—TIME, Feb. 4). Described by the publishers as a novel, The Sudden Guest is in fact little more than an elaborately contrived but not penetrating character study, with the East Coast hurricanes of 1938 and 1944 as background. The hurricanes blow an assortment of people into Miss Leckton’s little world of servants, silverware and unearned income. She resents the intrusion, especially if the intruders happen to be Jews.

The obvious moral is that in a world swept by hurricanes, national and international, slamming the door is not always possible—though nothing much has happened to Miss Leckton by the end of the book to indicate it. Poet Christopher La Farge spends 100,000 words pointing his moral. He might have made it needle-sharp in 10,000.