A HOUSE DIVIDED

Here's the best book Pearl Buck has done since The Good Earth. It belongs to the trilogy begun in that volume, and continued in Sons. And it rounds out the picture, giving us China today, through the story of a student, son of the War Lord, himself part poet, part philosopher, tied by the traditions of old, yet rebelious when they touch his personal problems. The scene shifts from the home of his father to the hut where his grandfather began to put down the roots of his success; then to the coast city, where he met the new China; then to America and flashes of his career as a foreign student; then back again to China, there to seek identification of new and old in the victorious forces of revolution and in wiping out the debt his father had undertaken for him. The story is a gripping one; the picture of new China at war with itself, a convincing one; the style, with that rhythmic prose that seems now Oriental, now Biblical, is characteristically Pearl Buck, and one has come to expect it as part of her power. The book is a sure bet for sales and rentals, and should do as well, or better, than Sons, and much better than The Mother. Count on a sound backing of advertising and promotion.