TORCHLIGHT TO VALHALLA

This young writer is doing some of the most interesting work being published in a rather stylized modern vein. She has a strange clarity in her sparseness of expression, and a quality of perceptiveness in interpretation of emotional values that redeems her somewhat slight stories from insignificance. This is an interpretation of the period of emotional stagnation through which a girl who has lost her adored father goes, before finding herself. A man, deeply in love with her, struggles against the barrier of her indifference, thinks he has broken through, only to find that another girl has come on the scene and captured the moment of emotional release for which he had waited. This suggestion of homosexual content has marred some of her previous work. Perhaps eventually she will grow beyond it. Meantime -- this is not a book for conservatives, in spite of the delicate handling.