Books: Gob Meets Girl

THE PALE BLONDE OF SANDS STREET [224 pp.)—William Chapman White—Viking ($2.50).

Pale Blonde is a neat, agreeable popular novel obviously designed to become an even neater, even more agreeable movie. Its story: an ingenuous sailor named Johnny Smith picks up with a Brooklyn-Irish girl named Katie. (Sands Street connects the Brooklyn Bridge with the Brooklyn Navy Yard.) After tinting a little of the town they retire to her room, very much in love, misunderstand each other before they can possibly worry censors, and lose each other.

Thanks to a convenient piece of Irish magic, Katie spends the rest of the book making wraithlike appearances (while the real Katie sleeps) on practically every vessel in the U.S. Fleet, seeking Johnny Smith. Author White makes the most of this opportunity to furnish knowledgeable vignettes of Navy life and talk.

The main cleavage among readers will be between those who can take any amount of Irish sentimentality and those who prefer to leave it alone.