THE NINE MILE CIRCLE

To those who lived with Pati Hill through what was presumably the period of writing this novel in The Pt and the Century Plant the achievement will come short of the anticipation. At least it was for me. I found the novel unreal in its approach to adolescence, irritating in the long-drawn out trauma of pregnancy, and trying in its repetitive Gertrude Steinish style. Mrs. Carter, when the story opens, was uncomfortable and annoyed with her belated pregnancy-- out of patience with her prying small daughter, Linda, and insecure in her emotional reaction to Linda's friendship with Jan, whose father, Morton, recently killed in a motor crash, had been Alida Carter's youthful sweetheart. As the reader follows the tenuous pattern of each phase of the story, the human relationships wear a bit thin, and the non-existent pattern of plot fades out. I found it a bore.