TOO DEAR FOR MY POSSESSING

Not a world shaker, but unfailingly pleasant and interesting reading (of which there is not enough these days), with several decisive pieces of characterization, and a nice prose style. Miss Johnson's last book was in the ""men-of-good-will"" vein, a story of irresolutes in a troubled world. This book swings to the personal, as a man reviews his life from boyhood to middle years. Not a book for wide sales, but for the thoughtful reader. Claud spends his adolescent years in Bruges with a writer father and his blowsy mistress. He meets and loves Cecile Archer, but marries pretty, placid Meg -- and then meets Cecile again, in Paris. They decide to wait for his freedom -- and that freedom comes too late.