BLACK GOD

Selection of Book-of-the-Month Club for September may start this off on the right foot. Oddly enough, with an utterly dissimilar method and story, there is a haunting something about this that strikes the rhythm of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. This is a story of the Congo, or rather a group of slenderly related episodes woven together by the eerie presence of the old black man who counts off the beads on the rosary which hangs on the bush beside him, and who practises, year in and year out, throwing his knife across the river. Twenty years he sits there, while so-called civilization comes to Little River, twenty years before he is revenged for the loss of his hands and the disgrace of his sister. It's a strangely disturbing book, not apt to catch the rank and file, but there is just a chance that it may be one of these books that ""go"" on snob appeal.