A first novel of the pirations and humiliations during the formative years of a young man. There is some perceptive writing here, if people -- and of the South in its gentility and . But the whole, as a novel, seem inconclusive there is no action. The first part prets David's boyhood , his materiallatic elder brother, and his aristocratic father who . Sensitive, impressionable, David is often at odds with the small town where he lives after his father's death. College brings his first love for Elizabeth, , married and looking only for a very impermanent affair. The world war -- then Italy during the he sees the beginning of Fascism, is almost taken in by it, in time what lies behind it and returns to America. Limited.