MEMORIES OF HAPPY DAYS
By
Julian Green writes of his youth in France, an autobiography which has much that is graceful, charming, and reflective. Through incidents and impressions, he gives one a sense of the early years in Passy, with American parents of pronounced southern tradition who insisted that their six foreign reared children remain American. School, church, holidays, mishaps and controversial pleasures, years leading up to the outbreak of World War I, and his mother's death. The hard years of the war itself, Julian's entry into the American Field Service at 17, into the Legion at 18. After the war, studies resumed in America, and ultimately a return to Paris to decide upon writing as a career, with subsequent first efforts, friends and helpful critics. Has a tranquil, pleasant quality -- a nostalgic looking back to a France he knew.