Books: On Manhasset Bay

ROMANCE PRESCRIBED—Eric Hatch— Farrar & Rinehart ($1).

The story is of a spoiled and jilted young novelist of intellectual pretensions who is freshened up and made marketable and happy again by design of his sporting publisher. Jarnal Harvey, disappointed by sophisticated Frances, retires to his publisher’s houseboat in Manhasset Bay. On the way he upsets his rowboat and is salvaged by beauteous Margot. They form a friendship which prospers. Puttering about the Bay, he meets eccentric Faulkner, gains mental health which he loses by returning to New York andencountering Frances, herself jilted and now hunting him. Faulkner appears, frightens off Frances with threat of scandal, kidnaps Harvey to his yacht where is foregathered a group of magnates playing furiously with toy trains. Harvey’s ego diminishes, and much clean fun with Margot ensues, interrupted by a visit from Frances and some friends on a small cruiser. Frances & friends drink with such success that Frances, disillusioned as to Harvey’s wealth and roundly repudiating him, falls overboard, has to be rescued— by Margot, now properly disgusted. Harvey’s eyes are opened, etc., etc. but Margot has left and it is three days before he finds her. Embrace, affiancement, the revealing of Faulkner as Margot’s blueblood uncle and a doubly famous author under two pseudonyms, the acceptance by Faulkner’s publisher friend of Harvey’s diary of these events as a new, greater novel— all this is the work of moments. Author Hatch writes in a cheery, bourgeois fashion, helps a hot night pass painlessly.