HOME BEFORE DARK

A first novel shadows Charlotte Bronn, from her return home after two years in an asylum to her final acceptance of her repudiation by her husband some months later, and it is an uncomfortable record of the old resentments and new humilitations which bring her to the breaking point again. For, once home, she suspects the increasing intimacy of her husband, Arnold, and her stepsister, Joan, and Arnold is coldly, critically forbearing. Jake Diamond, a Jew, to whom Arnold has given room and board as an ""exercise in charity"", tries to help her, as does Ham, who had loved her. But the awkwardness of faculty social events, the finality of her physical rejection feed her fears- imagined and real, end in a dreadful public spectacle. It is only then that she realizes that her hatred of Joan goes back to the past, and as she turns her over to Arnold, and turns them both out of the house, she is ready to appeal to a doctor for help.... There's a certain exaggeration, almost less in Charlotte than in those she confronts, which invalidates this to an extent and while curiosity is engaged, conviction is not secured.