NO VICTORY FOR THE SOLDIER

Suggests Louis Paul's Wrong World in so far as it is the story of the making of a piano virtuoso by sheer concentration. Beyond that the emphasis shifts, for John Knox was coldly ambitious for himself, always the musician first, sacrificing to his career all chances for sincere love or absorbing passion. There is artistic integrity -- and emotional sterility, well portrayed, though weak in the ending of escape through the civil war in Spain. It is well done in its fashion, but it is a story told too often today, a story once more of the artist seeking to find his own soul. The author, through his own sincerity of belief in what he is striving for, succeeds in making his characters live, and at times, in moving his reader. His style is terse, clever, almost dispassionate. It is a second novel--James Hill can write. But -- so far -- he has not found anything particularly new to say.