MRS. APPLEYARD'S YEAR

Mrs. Miniver, Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, Aunt Elsa, are now joined by Mrs. (and Mr.) Appleyard of Boston, younger than Aunt Elsa, older and mellower than Mrs. Miniver and the Cugate. Mother of grown children, who are not too respectful but casually devoted, whom she loves for their faults rather than their virtues, wife of a loyal but fierily opinionated husband, Mrs. Appleyard is impish about expected things, unexpected, and sturdily, individually Bostonian. This is her calendar year from New Year's resolutions to Christmas cards and shopping, what each month brings in its train of thoughts, activities, ponderables and imponderables. There are bables, gardens, antiquss and their refinishing, the war and the English and their telephones, the past and the present, summer in Vermont with picnics, food, parties, a forgotten community, daylight saving, unpacking for winter, Thanksgiving, football and the draft. It is welcome reading, with appealing sentiment, engaging humor, and felicitious phrasemaking.