Word: marietta
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...Naughty Marietta...
...MARIETTA-Johan Fabricius-Little, Brown ($3). Looking back on the earlier 1930's, what would some Mark Sullivan of the future pick as typical novels of that bygone day? He might well choose such a lean and lustful tale as John O'Hara's Butterfield 8. He might mention in passing such names as John Dos Passes, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner. But these would all be sideshows. Most phenomenally popular book of the quinquennium, he would report, was Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse. By 1935 critics who had tried to blink it off as simply...
...Marietta reminded readers of Anthony Adverse, not only by its length (813 pp.) but by its time (18th Century), its scene (Italy), its general scheme (picaresque chronicle). And like Anthony, Marietta's son was long aborning. Aside from these surface similarities, The Son of Marietta could not fairly be compared with Anthony Adverse, in all senses a bigger book. More protracted than packed, Author Fabricius' narrative could be simply described as a tale of guilty mother love and a spoiled son who turned out according to rule. Really two separate novels laid end to end, it gave thrifty...
...Marietta herself got off to a bad start. Abandoned as an infant by her actress mother, she was brought up by a surly innkeeper, ran wild in the small-town streets. When her foster-father grew threatening she took refuge in a convent, graduated from there to the bishop's household. When the bishop, a fine upstanding man, found Marietta's nubility troubling, he married her off to a young coffinmaker. She liked marriage and wanted children but got none; so she went back to the bishop for help. Then she ran away. A year later she turned...
...Moviegoer obviously spent an unexciting afternoon. His readers will find the seats far more comfortable at the University on Wednesday, when "Naughty Marietta" returns for review...