FIDDLESTRINGS
By
Marguerite de Angeli's hero, eleven in 1898, has her husband Dai de Angeli's name, and her story has the air of a family memoir. Dai, whose parents have decided to make a violinist of him, resents the time that practicing takes from baseball and other play but takes pride in his growing musical skill. His lessons and concerts and schoolboy fights in Philadelphia and his sometimes rash (and lovingly chastised) escapades with boats and guns during an Atlantic City summer are set down with fondness and fidelity, an artless style that sometimes seems merely inept, and no pretense of a plot.