MR. FINCHLEY'S HOLIDAY

Unknown author, unknown book -- does it belong in the section set aside for essential purchase? We think so. Perhaps we are betting on personal bias, but somehow we have a hunch that this book is a ""natural"". It might be designated as a modern picaresque novel; it is sheer adventure of a somewhat extravagant kind. But with all that, it has the quality of Priestley's The Good Companions and of the inimitable and too little known, Mr. Thompson in the Attic, by Anna Keown, adroitly blended. Mr. Finchley is a sober-minded clerk, who is planning his first holiday in many years. Chance disrupts all his plans and thrusts him into one fantastic situation after another, and the tale is spun on a tenuous thread of humor, poetry, and kindliness. Good fun reading, and should be easy selling and easy renting. Try it on those who liked The Road to Nowhere as well as the other two types of readers. You may guess, we liked it.