Books: Hurst Papers

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FIVE AND TEN—Fannie Hurst—Harper's ($2.50).

Author Hurst's latest contribution to the heterogeneous U. S. saga has to do mainly with a family of Raricks upon whom life brings many blessings in the shape of a chain of 5¢ & 10¢ stores. Little weazened Father Rarick acquires the happy faculty of buying hairnets and celluloid balls low and selling them higher builds a 79-story monument to himself, misunderstands his family. His pampered, poetical son, Avery, commits suicide at college because, "it was too much." Mother Rarick bitterly tries to suck romance out of a surreptitious affair with another woman's gigolo, Ramond. Her daughter is fascinated by a handsome married man whose wife is about to give him an heir.

All of these battered old situations Author Hurst handles with a certain sureness that necessarily comes with tautology. Her acuteness of observation has enabled her to catalog the trappings of the rich and a few of their more obvious emotions. Her treatment of the story and the setting will facilitate its conversion for the movies. It is to be hoped, however, that some of the dialogue will be rearranged before it is squawked out from behind a flickering screen.

The story ends with Tycoon Rarick eating milk and crackers to the strains of "Laugh, Clown, Laugh."