THE RED ROOM (247 pp.)—Françoise Mallet-Joris—Farrar, Straus & Cudahy ($3.50).
L'amour is the French national game, and the French novel is a handbook and guide to its fine points. These are at least as intricate as the fine points of, say, lawn tennis, though perhaps not quite as wholesome. One of the most elegant sportswriters of L'amour is a 26-year-old Flemish-born Parisian housewife and mother named Françoise Mallet-Joris. In
The Illusionist (TIME, Oct. 13, 1952) she told the strange story of a 15-year-old girl who fell in love with her father's mistress.
In The Red Room she picks up the same characters two years...