UNDER A THATCHED ROOF

An urbane and scholarly sheaf of essays, revealing a side of the Nordhoff and Hall team that is a surprise. Poetic, rambling, with touches of humor and a fey quality -- a far cry from straight story telling. There's an unsuspected nostalgic quality; there are personal and human bits, which make one feel intimate with the writer's foibles; there are reminiscences of chance meetings, of the last war, of the tropics; there are character sketches, and parable. And throughout, there's constant sense of literary undertones, overtones and allusions. For the Logan Pearsall Smith audience.