The Open City

ALTHOUGH the characters are fictitious and the story told is described as fiction, this “novel of Americans left behind in the Philippines” is fundamentally factual. The author and her husband were taken prisoners when the Japanese invaded Manila. They were among the two thousand Americans and Europeans crowded into the grounds and buildings of Santo Tomas University. The author was there in a position to observe — and to experience — the alternations of hope and despair, the rumors, the makeshifts, the monotony, the efforts to survive, the emergence of strong and of weak or vicious characters, the whole psychology of mass internment. All this, and more too, she has transferred to the touching and poignant pages of this book.

Her principal characters are three women, two of them separated from their husbands, the third a rather dubious glamour girl. The story is a slight one, but as it develops, one is caught in a sharp atmosphere of dread, of impending doom. Betrayal of officers disguised as civilians in a civilian internment camp — betrayal which means certain death —hangs over the closing chapters like a pall. Act the book is not a gloomy one. There is a matter-of-fact courage lighted by humor throughout, an authentic story of prisoners who now, thank God, are free. Doubleday, Doran, $2.50.

R. E. DANIELSON