THE MISSES ELLIOT OF GENEVA

If this is fiction, it is still far-fetched to call it a novel. I'd prefer were I selling it, to classify it as the profile of a community, Geneva, New York. It consists of a collection of delicious anecdotes about the eccentrics of a quondam center of Victorian culture. There's something of ""Saki"" in the brief bits, full and running over with bon mots that seem to spring spontaneously from the material sources. The Misses Elliot of the title are the dominating figures, two elderly ladies at odds with half the town, ladies of ""dynastic importance"", so low church that they grovel. It is the sort of book you will have fun selling to a carefully picked group of readers, people who like unusual bits. Dip in here and there, and see for yourself. There is humor and an undercurrent of irony.