Forever Amber
By
THE advertising and publicity campaign which the publishers have lavished on Forever Amber would be a real asset to a Presidential candidate. The reviewers have responded nobly, largely in period language. Phrases about the “honey-haired trollop,” the “dauntless wench,” the “lusty, bawdy Restoration,” have ornamented book pages from coast to coast. Boston has banned the book — which is not likely to depress Macmillan’s sales department — and there has even appeared an unlikely paragraph to the effect that the movies do not see their way to producing the tale. I think we needn’t worry too much about that. Leaving out a few beds and writing in a few marriage ceremonies might alter tilings a trifle — but the Great Fire of London, the plague, the debtors’ prison, Charles the Second’s court, and all those lovely, lovely costumes would still be there.
Seriously, though, advertising alone cannot make people read and enjoy a 972-page novel about a beautiful and completely amoral girl who used her bountiful physical assets to get out of a small village and eventually — with several detours — into a king’s bed. Kathleen Winsor writes without any literary distinction. Not one of her characters has more than a surface personality. Not one of them endears himself to the reader. The coincidences which stud the book would strain the credulity of a ten-year-old child. But just the same, a lot of people are going to have fun reading about Amber St. Clare. I did. I think.I know, as one reader, why I did. The Watch and Ward Society might he surprised to hear that Forever Amber reminded me forcibly of a series of books I devoured when I was young — the “Little Girl in Old New York” (or Old Baltimore, or Old Wherever) series, it was.
Forever Amber is my “Little Girl in Olde London. And so, I believe, is Miss Winsor. Her historical background seems less research than excited wonder. The length of the book, the flash and roar and color and excitement and general naughtiness, spring from the author’s passionate fascination with this world she has dreamed up. Anything, she finds, can and does happen. When she gets through telling you one story, she pulls at your sleeve to listen to the next one. I wonder if she isn’t a little lonely, now that she has written the last word.
The book is basically naïve. There isn’t a quotable line in it. It doesn’t put you to the trouble of thinking about anything at all. Quite simply, it entertains you in the most preposterous, flamboyant, unaesthetic way. Macmillan, $3.00.
FRANCES WOODWARD