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THE HOUSE OF STRANGERS by Edith Simon

THE HOUSE OF STRANGERS

By

Pub Date: April 24th, 1953
Publisher: Putnam

Perhaps it should not come as a surprise that the author of The Golden Hand write a contemporary novel that presents a group of archeologists in communal living. Her first novel must have been rooted in personal knowledge of the past as revealed through archeological findings. This new book only hints- and never pursues- the idea that the ""digs"" are permeated with an aura from the past. In this case, the influences must have all been bad, for the workers proved an unpleasant lot, and their communal life was a disintegrating one, permeated with ambitions in conflict, with jealousy, suspicion, the evils of gossip, selfishness, and almost none of the milk of human kindness. The central characters are a widow, whose every move seems open to misinterpretation by her fellows, the head of the project, and the first assistant, whose role is constantly in question because he was the choice of the Scottish Nationalists to head the works. Both men desired Vivien Jesset:- Bayard, the head, had a wife in an institution; Monro was inarticulate but ultimately won her. And meantime, the household