A GIRL IN WINTER

From England (where it was published in 1957 and is now scheduled for republication) this low keyed, and sometimes deliberately indistinct novel spends a day with Katherine Lind who comes to an unidentified city in this country from somewhere in Europe, during the war. The months she has spent alone in a drab room and in a friendless job in a public library have been brightened by the memory of Robin Fennel, whom she had visited on a holiday when in England six years before. This earlier experience occasions the extensive central inset of the novel which begins with her hopes of seeing Robin again. It ends when Robin appears suddenly, deceptively jaunty in his uniform, for his diffident charm has given way to restlessness, petulance, a certain pathos... Mr. Larkin is a poet and there are niceties of perception and phrase to grace his novel which is no more- really- than a brief encounter.