Word: ellin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ELLIN POLLACHEK...
CASTLE UGLY by Mary Ellin Barrett. 255 pages. E. P. Dutton...
...trouble in the house proves to be not single but multiple, and it is all wound up with the gothic flourish of an ambiguous murder. The prose in this first novel by Mary Ellin Barrett, daughter of Composer Irving Berlin, sometimes rises a little too high on its toes and ends up breathless. But the book is saved from the Venus flytrap of ladies' magazine fiction by its easy intimacy with the ambiance of those days of picnic baskets and tennis flannels. The author has a sophisticated sense of the tensions that show among even the most beautiful people...
...could 40 years ago. And I'm feeling great." He would have to. Forty years ago, he had already written Alexander's Ragtime Band, Always, Remember, and A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody. He had become a millionaire and married a debutante, Ellin Mackay-prompting his fellow songwriters to hymn in tribute: A Kid Who Came from the East Side Found a Sweet Society Rose...
...Author-Ellin, an accomplished mystery writer now trying to go straight, had the makings of a good suspense yarn. But by locking himself into such pretentious symbolism, he begs to be taken seriously. And taken seriously he is a laugh. Ben Smith is not salvageable on any terms. The new freedom he is supposed to find in art dealing is merely a change of directors. When Dealer Klebenau runs out of money, he will no doubt con poor Smith into stealing the Mona Lisa-for art's sake, of course...