TO LOVE IS TO LISTEN

Jane Ardmore has written earlier books about Eddie Cantor and Joan Crawford and Edith Head, all of which we happily avoided, and this one, misted through memory and tears, is a loose continuity about Julie Dekker, a wonderful and apparently indestructible old lady. The book closes with her centenary. But for most of its course she is living in a home for the aged, waiting for the visits of her granddaughter, Jill, which fortunately become more frequent as Jill gets older and more understanding and falls in love (with the wrong man) and.... To Love is to Listen and to read is to gag--this is quite a dose of schmaltz even for a matronly market.