Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Bjartur of Summerhouses is the central figure in Independent People. This grim, graphic novel of life on the Icelandic uplands, circa 1900-1920, is the Book-of-the-Month Club's choice for August and, according to the publisher, an "epic in the grand tradition of great fiction." It may be less expansively described as a half-sympathetic, half-scornful portrait of the Icelandic peasant mind, done with broad "epic" touches and special political intent. For Author Halldór Laxness uses his fine portrait, which is drawn in almost Holbein-like detail, as the text...
Escape in Passion, like its predecessors, is a novel with a vast and varied cast. Its 400-odd characters - including an orphan boy, an electrician, an absconding millionaire, an actress, a smattering of Cabinet ministers-have one notable advantage over Balzac's and Zola's 19th Century people: Romains' travel...
...despite these racy blessings, the novel is dull going. Diligently describing the European stew in Hitler's first year, whole pages are devoted to such passages as this: "In every issue touching monetary policy, disarmament, and the consolidation of world peace, it appears that Great Britain ... is less and less willing to take any step except with the full agreement of the United States. ... I find myself in complete agreement with Great Britain...
Weighed down by international depression and their own heavy thinking, Chronicler Romains' characters literally escape into passion. Some seek normal love, others prefer perversion. Result (in the English translation): to make his novel safe for U.S. family readers, Romains says he has felt obliged to make "completely brutal excisions." The deletions are certain to stimulate readers' imaginations. Example: "If you like, I'll sit at the piano (three words deleted...
...Totem Pole, Life in a Putty Knife Factory), he wrote newspaper features, including movie-star interviews. During that ordinarily harmless tour of duty, the late Lupe Velez once became so agitated that she threw a small brown dog at him. Now, at long last, Author Smith has written a novel about a cat, a large yellow alley cat called Rhubarb...