THE BACHELOR'S BABY

Have you ever walked down the dingy corridor of a rundown office building, read the names of firms operating behind closed doors, and idly wondered what sort of world was concealed there? Well, here's a novel that takes you behind the scenes, and shows you the mad, crazy, unglamorous world it is. Some of it seems in such broad caricature that it reads like a gigantic spoof. Even the central figures in the plot- thin spun over the span of the novel, seem slightly off-center, unreal. We have Oliver, the bachelor, playboy son of an earnest judge, earning his living buying and selling resorts. The mechanics of his business life are kept smoothly running by ""Miss"" Mason, his secretary, and his world falls apart when she tells him she is pregnant and her doctor husband expects her to stop working. Jim, the doctor, is hospital-bound, and needs her much less than does Oliver. And his gyrations in the process of hiring and firing substitutes have faint echoes of some of the goings on in Auntie Mame. At last-the baby is an active and very much alive fact- and his mother comes back to work for Oliver. The transformation of office into nursery- and of a bachelor into a maudlin worshipper at the baby's shrine- provides the motif for the continued operation of Oliver's business, and ultimately the springboard for the solution of his matrimonial problems: a house -- a wife- a place of business- a groundfloor apartment for the budding pediatrician, and Junior -- and of course, ""Miss"" Mason, for around her it all revolved.... Nonsense, not too plausibly written, but one can see screen play and Broadway- and a lot of rental library ladies getting quiet chuckles over a successor to Mr. Belvedere.