THE MAGIC YEAR

Introducing a German author, now in this country, and the first part of a projected trilogy (to be endorsed by Thomas Mann; Frans Werfel) this is a panel of childhood, retrospective, introspective. There is a fullness here, sometimes an teness, of detail and of style which is more European than American. There is a solidity, also a stolidity, which is German -- and of questionable appeal on this side. Within these limitations, this is an able portrait of middle class Germany and a middle class family in Hamburg; of Jakob Andermann, the boy, -- his irascible father and his gentle mother; of Thomas, his older brother who was to die -- and Robby, his scapegrace friend; of school, a Christmas fair and a Christmas dinner; of his father's long sickness; of a burglary -- and his first intimations of evil; of Minna, the maid, who got in trouble, etc. No concentrated story here -- episodes of a year in the past wholly remembered in the present. I question wide sales.