CAST A COLD EYE

From The New Y Review, Mademoiselle a selection of stories - sketches- which are more in character with her earlier The Company She Keeps than her later The If here the shading is a little softer, there is the same consciousness of frailty and of failure, the goad of irony, the bitterness which is flecked with antagonism. There is a woman caught in a marriage she abhors but to which she surrenders after an ineffectual escape; the neuter, neutral values of that professional friend of the family; some Americans abroad and a parasitic pickup; a stay in a hospital; a return to her own comfortless childhood and the combative grandmother whose charity did not begin at home; etc. etc. A clever commentary on character and situation, these pieces reflect a satiric bent which is worldly, sharp, severe.