The White Queen

THIS first novel has the weaknesses of most first novels by writers who have anything to say. It tries to say too much, and it is too " true to life.” This criticism may sound odd, but it is always the tendency of the immature writer to think that scenes and characters which are described accurately thereby become “real.” I am sure many of the people and conversations in this book are based on actuality, but they have only a surface value, because they are not dramatically conceived as parts of an imaginative whole. The book tells of the adventures of an American girl who married into an English " county" family, discovers that she does not love her husband or her husband’s world, and is introduced to the truth of love and to the truth of English working-class life by another man. It is not so banal as it sounds, as it is written with genuine sincerity, and the author knows the worlds she is talking about, and does not evade her facts or her conclusions. It is a true picture of much of English life before the war, but it is not a living one. E. D.