THE LITTLE LOCKSMITH

There's a fragility, an intimacy and a devotional quality to this distinctly personal story of a life which many will find moving -- and unique. Young moderns may feel that there's a tremulousness, an excess, which might seem cloying. But nature people, who have known sorrow, will gain by reading it.....Invalided through childhood by spinal tuberculosis, later deformed, this tragic experience created in her a heightened sensitivity, an awareness, which is full conveyed here. The refusal of her family and of outsiders to speak of her deformity exaggerated her sense of affliction, led her to believe that she was unfit for any normal relationship, and turned her to writing and substitution of ""the invulnerable passion of art for vulnerable human passion"". Then her thirties, she broke away from dependence on others, found the house in Castine on Penobsoot Bay (Maine) which was to liberate her. The remodelling of this house as a refuge for others eventually brought her a new life...The partial serialization of this in the Atlantic has created a waiting market for the complete book. The choice by the Book of the Month Club as co-selection for November will widen that market through the extensive publicity such a choice makes.