A HAPPY ENDING

Isadore Rose is a seventy-nine-year-old Jewish millionaire. Hoping to escape the solicitude of pompous fund-raisers and relatives in stretch pants, he consents to hire a companion. She turns out to be a discreet, honest, womanly (Greer Garsonish) young widow, who understand his desire to be left alone. The desire turns from stubborn passivitsy into a solitary engagement with the unfamiliar. As they go to Italy, then to Jordanian Jerusalem and Petra, the old man and the quiet woman develop, not a schmaltzy soul-mateyness, but an odd kind of friendship. He dies liberated; she is left to deal with a legacy and the theft of his body. No doubt there are morals to this capably written story, but the novel will appeal most to the league of readers who like their fiction bland and unassuming, with only a soupcon of Deeper Meaning.