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A MOMENT IN CAMELOT by Maggie Rennett

A MOMENT IN CAMELOT

By

Pub Date: Oct. 25th, 1968
Publisher: Geis

Camelot is Washington, D.C. and this novel, as big as the monument (736 pages) is the publisher's fall contender. Will it outgross previous pre-written and pre-determined nominees? Books like politics demonstrate the art of the possible but this one may take more than an act of faith. . . . it hasn't the energy of Valley or the King or the sex (except for one or two obligatory if unobjectionable bouts) of either of those or of The Exhibitionist. Perseverance will get you through painlessly enough but you may not want to bother and there's no reason why you should. Half of the book, the half it takes to get going, deals with the making of the president of one Alec Girard, Senator from Vermont. By his side Andrea, rich, beautiful, patroness of art and style which she innovates in the While House, mother of darling little Elizabeth and an infant son (with a miscarriage in between). Who her? The other half of the ticket consists of Will Farland, of the State Department, and Marian his wife, and their marriage is rockier -- Marian bridles with self-sufficiency and she doesn't like the idea that democracy sometimes comes out sounding like demagoguery. Well, there's her affair with a French sculptor; the surfacing violence of civil rights in the South with a faithful retainer (Marian's) on the march; and this is synchronized with the slow death of little Elizabeth in the hospital -- leukemia. . . . That's about it --women's magazine fiction which would take four years to serialize, in prose as processed as yogurt.