THE LITTLE PEOPLE

by Albert Halper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1942

Wder of a scalpel once again, Halper strips the surface to show up the nerves and tissues of an organization, this time a specialty shop of luxury furs and millinery, in Chicago. His ""little people"" are the employees of the shop, with the basement and its workers, as the focus. There is the hatter, whose wife is dying of cancer; there are the messenger boys and the shipping clerks and the furriers; there is the brash young elevator boy whose yearning for romance finds vent in lewd imaginings and shartive gropings when he spends his slender funds on dance hall dames and skating missing. There is a millinery worker, who comes down to the basement for a daily cup of coffee, always hoping for a word from the flashy salesman. There is the old watchman, whose life is wrapped up in the interests of the firm he has served for sixteen years. There are glimpses of human emotions in the raw -- of people on the edge of uncertainty, emotionally, physically, financially. There are ironic sidelights on social questions --there's life and death and birth and romance and disillusionment. Helper has a faculty for making his situations and his people real, but his is rot a faculty for prettifying the seamy side of life. There is plenty of the flesh -- the one commodity not always priced. 'ware your market. Not for Public Libraries.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1942

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1942

Categories: FICTION