THE BROKEN PITCHER

A psychological novel of a double triangle, as Sheila adoring the memory of her dead father, is shocked by the knowledge that her mother is married again -- to a scientist. But when he appears, Sheila is herself fascinated -- and suddenly realizes that she has fallen in love with him and desperately wants him to know it. And then her mother, whether sensing it or not, tells Sheila the story of her marriage -- to a man with whom two other women were in love, -- one, the woman who had given them the house in which they lived, -- the other who had turned over to him her dead doctor husband's practice and who too was living in their home. An interesting situation, handled in an original pattern, but the style is mannered, overwritten and studiedly arty. Perhaps when the young author matures she will outgrow what seems now like mannerism. The Avery Hopwood Fiction Award.