A HILLTOP IN HAZARD

The hilltop is in the Himalayas and the hazard is from the skies when Chinese aircraft subject a small mission with its leper compound to constant strafing during the three days of the novel's length. Ascetic Dr. Bone is singleminded in his God-serving, life-saving dedication while those around him would gladly return to native shores: his young son Magnus; his nurse, a congenital spinster; Mrs. Purdie who has Just been delivered of twins; and an arbitrary, autocratic, adamant English eccentric and lapsed Christian Mrs. Calverley who shares the stage with Dr. Bone... Mrs. Rider writes with an eye toward the incongruous and the absurd in the middle of tradegy, and her opposition of religion in the abstract versus the individual on the spot stiffens the spine of her novel which is quite astute insofar as it goes.