THE CHOICE

This is Samuel Youd's third novel written under his'own name and it concerns the hopeless love affair between a young businessman and a woman seven years his senior. Paul Arrodyce is a correct, sought-after young man of 27 whose involvements with women -- usually married women, have always been of a casual nature, though his current affair with Stella has become more serious than he intended by the time he meets Ilona Davis. Ilona has a long standing involvement of her own -- with a much older married man, which she would like to break off but can't. Ilona is a cool, remote science journalist but she exerts a subtle fascination on Paul who has always had too much of his own way. He receives a choice appointment to Caracas from the conservative oil company he works for but he's willing to give it up and the makings of a comfortable career if Ilona will marry him. It develops that she has been using Paul merely as a buffer in her own pathetic romance and she turns him down at the next sign of encouragement from her older lover, leaving him to go his own way, alone. It's an intelligent and convincingly written novel and establishes more sympathy for Paul Arrodyce than one would have thought possible.