The Sound of an American

WHICHEVER way you look at it, this novel is strong meat, not for the squeamish. You have to be pretty well disillusioned to read it without suffering additional bruises and shocks. But no writer can make the best possible hanging cheerful, and no writer can make a tonic of the dreadful disintegration of the French and the debacle of 1940. Primarily it is a war story, only secondarily a love story. As a war picture it is superb; as a romance it is rather paltry. Abner Coe, American musical critic born in France, hence caught up as a belligerent in the military maelstrom, falls in love with Roxane Morell, a pianiste, who says she is in love with him but divides her favors with someone else. The scenes include the Riviera on the eve of war, fighting round the Maginot Line, leaves in Paris (mostly spent in hunting the elusive Roxane), refugees fleeing before the Germans, the hero’s life in a French military prison for infraction of military rules, and escape to Lisbon, and finally to America, which the expatriate finds the grandest place on earth. Strongly reminiscent of A Farewell to Arms, this novel will either be liked greatly or disliked utterly. It is anything but an “escape.” J. C.