THE DINNER PARTY
By
From the area of Middle Age comes this journal of a (would be) lady of fashion, which has the fun of the commonplace and the finesse of a passing summer. The impetus is supplied by a small dinner party which gets out of hand as the number of guests expands. There's an unexpected visit from sister Julie, adept in rousing unrest and dissatisfaction. There's Friend Maud's fortune teller act at a school fair, which creates a ""Situation"" of goodly proportions. Alteration of a part of the house brings in an unsuspected congressional aspirant. And finally, as a result of the dinner, there is a plush weekend at a nearby Army post. Then there are the daughters:- Rachela who is ""Pamela"" to two spinster sisters; Cissie whose visiting friend supplies still further pressures; and Linda, home from college and ready for Love. Important political figures must not be bypassed, nor ""our girl's"" husband, Charles, whose ""stinging moderation"" has its own balanced worth. All told, you have a charged field of matrimony and domesticity. Play by play, this panels a variety of nice people in changing focus and should delight that sophistication which can cope with truncated telegraphese. The household effects of Shirley Jackson's Life Among the Savages and the nostalgic joy-making of Louise Andrews Kent's Mrs. Appleyard suggest clues to an audience of the stay-at-home ladies who will love this.