SUCH IS THE KINGDOM

Take Our Town and How Green Was My Valley; set the story in a more or less current industrial town in Connecticut, not far from Waterbury; make the characters Irish-Americans, warm-hearted, impulsive, with tears and laughter closely linked and with a sensitiveness to beauty and a rough and ready manner of meeting life; then tone down some of the realism, so that it is just edged enough to be modern, and just careful enough to escape censure; make some of the characters sympathetic and some of the others a trifle saccharine -- and you have Such Is The Kingdom. It does not quite come to grips with its story -- but the pattern of the lives is vivid. There is a tendency to shy clear of social implications or economic problems, seemingly inevitable, and this weakens its fibre. But it has a nostalgic quality that endears it to many readers, and Thomas Sugrue is worth watching.