SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN

Even in a minor work there is the dependable G.B. Stern charm, her warm understanding, her keen appreciation of the major issues created by minor predicaments. I've always felt that a Stern novel would be lacking in a prime ingredient if there was not a good healthy quarrel. And this time, a whole book is built around an accusation, a violent break in a pattern of friendship, which it takes the balance of the text to unravel. Janice Arnot is confronted with the death of a friend of schooldays- and realizes that a misunderstanding could not now be cleared up. And close on the heels of this comes another- and more mischievous misunderstanding. Somehow she thinks the two are linked- that the fault must lie in her unwitting and unintentional cruelty, and she seeks to find out the root of the trouble. In the process, the reader explores with her facts and figments of the past; wise handling of issues in the present; growing awareness of the interrelationship of human responsibility. And in the end, the initial mystery is solved- and the reason behind it proves to be something for which she was in no measure to blame. One feels the people, the issues, the solutions are live ones. And once again, G.B. Stern has contributed to a gallery of living portraits.