THE RAZOR'S EDGE

One of the most challenging books Somerset Maughan has given us. Those who look to him for a colorful, romantic story will find this slow-paced at the start; but in the final analysis even they will find that he has told a good story -- more than one, in fact, and that he has given something else as well. For in Larry Dornell he has drawn a character symbolic or many we shall meet in the years ahead -- a youth who has lost touch with the ing that had ttered before the war (this time the first World War) and who is seeking knowledge and faith. Larry was engaged to a girl he had always known, Isabel Bradley; but Larcy's unworldliness and reluctance to conform result in a broken engaget, and she rries as Maugham tells her ten years inter ""for a square diamond and a mik cot. And Larry goes on with his search, through study, through travel, finally to find at least a glimmer of light in two years spent in the ashram of an Indian story -- Larry's story -- and the story of the tragic worlding, Elliot Templeton, Isabel's bachelor uncle, are threads that most and part and most again in a pattern skillfully woven by Maugham, who is father confessor to each one in term. The book has some of Maughan's best writing, some of his finest characterization....This appeared in Red Book last Spring; it is the selection of the Literary Guild.