COME TO DUST

Not a book for many, but one for discerning taste, particularly for those appreciative of a continental savor. A delicate, wise and softly ironic picture of the provincial aristocracy in France at the close of the last war, and of a gentle parish outside Aix in the Savoie. It is a quiet book, strengthened by the author's sense of environment, of people, of detail. Twelve-year old Chantal has inherited a villa, and goes with her widowed mother, Marguerite, to live there. The book is filled with the people they know; the incidents are slight (at times erring on the side of inclusion of happenings that seem to jar the spirit and quality of the book). But, all in all, a book for the somewhat sophisticated market.