Books: Love Conquers All

• Share

SINNERS IN SUMMERTIME—Sigurd Hoel—Coward McCann ($1.50).

Not only Lithuanians and Letts but Danes and Scandinavians do it. Some-times against their better judgment, and in spite of all temptations to lead a life of single unruftledness. Sinners in Summertime, a somewhat sulphurous title for this report of a serious-minded and even noble experiment, tells about the summer holiday of four young men and four girls, Norwegians all, and all unmarried, emancipated, intellectual. Congenial companions in civilization, they thought it a good idea when a friend lent them an isolated island for the summer. All of them had work to do and were serious about doing it, each of them looked forward to a productive holiday. They were quite sure no sentimental complications would upset them.

At first their optimism was justified, but propinquity without possession grew more and more poignant. When two correct visitors from the outside world arrived, the situation came to a head, there was the devil to pay. Eventually, with the help of two fistfights, an attempted suicide, two engagements and a marriage, the tangle unwound itself.

Author Sigurd Hoel, himself a translator from English into Norwegian, has never before been translated. Sinners in Summertime is his first novel. It is appearing simultaneously in Norway, Sweden. Holland, Germany, the U. S.