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BLACK IS MY TRUELOVE'S HAIR by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

BLACK IS MY TRUELOVE'S HAIR

By

Publisher: Viking

Elizabeth Roberts has established herself as a prose poet who weaves somewhat stylized stories of the quiet countryside, stories slight in plot, but close to the rhythms of earth and simple people. When one tries to analyze this new book, the story seems shadowy, insubstantial. There is a girl as central figure, a girl who has come back from an elopement which did not end in marriage, and who tries to find her place again in a community which on one side looks askance, on the other is kindly and understanding. Then out of a burned-out love, comes a new love, over--shadowed by fear. Not until that fear is removed, can she go on safely, facing the vision. It is illusive, fragmentary; it does not come to grips with place or time. And yet there is a strange beauty, a sense of realization of essentials in the people of the little Kentucky village. Not an historical novel, as was The Great Meadow, with which it is uniform.