WHITE APPLES

Again in Lippincott's short story series, this is a debut in book form for a young American writer, and if piece by piece the novella, short stories and fables in this collection are not wholly successful, there is a persistent mood and tone in the thematic preoccupation with violence and the corruption of innocence. Karlen tends to be explicit to a fault, perhaps most noticeable in the title novella which deals with the nature of love as pursued by typed characters- a pure young girl, a plain, understanding friend, an immature artist. The stories too often fail to suggest, while dealing with symbolic concepts, and the fables are by far the freshest in both the originality of the material and its handling.