Word: staffords
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...MOUNTAIN LION (231 pp.)-Jean Stafford-Harcourt, Brace...
Unlike oil and water, symbolism and realism can be mixed-but it takes a skilled hand. Ambitious young Novelist Jean Stafford (Boston Adventure) takes a try at it in her second novel, and doesn't bring it off. In parts The Mountain Lion is beautifully clear-a delicate, sharp story of childhood and adolescence. But it darkens toward the end, and winds up in a desperately contrived coincidence...
...Novelist Stafford (who is the wife of Poet Robert Lowell) tells the story of Molly Fawcett, a plain, wise little girl growing up near Los Angeles in the 1920s. Going on nine when the story begins, she and her brother Ralph, 11, are the "intellectuals" of the family. Molly writes poetry and reads The American Boy; Ralph has already studied the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Reproduction. Like any brother and sister, they sometimes fight, but the rest of the time they are such cronies and co-conspirators that Molly thinks they might one day get married...
Doubtless this view was extreme. The British economic position still contained many heartening factors, and even The Crisis had been "exaggerated," according to the Board of Trade's usually pessimistic Sir Stafford Cripps...
...pace of work had begun to tell on other Ministers. John Strachey (Food) had been down with flu. Sir Stafford Cripps (Trade) had been out with a chill. Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin was nursing his high blood pressure. At a cocktail party a friend told him that he looked well. Said Bevin: "I feel worse than I look." Clem Attlee, an early riser, toiled to the Churchillian hour of 2:30 a.m. to handle the extra work...