CHATTERTON SQUARE

The fascination of Miss Young's novels for her audience is hard to define. There's a leisurely sense of being taken into the lives and hearts and minds of her characters- of being one with them during the reading- and afterwards counting them among the actual acquaintances made for life. William, Miss Mole, Celia --all have a warm spot in my heart. This is her first novel since 1938- and again her magic, illusive as it is, survived. The story is relatively slight- but when the last page is turned, you have lived yourself in Chatterton Square, enjoyed the freedom, the spontaneity of the Frasers' household, hated the tensions and strains of the Blacketts'. The time- too- comes back into being, the weeks of strain before the war. I liked it.