NEW FACE IN THE MIRROR

A short first novel by the 20-year old daughter of General Dayan of Israel""- so reads the publisher's announcement....The story is told in the first person and has more than the usual flavor of autobiography in the minute detailing of the gruelling training through which the Colonel's daughter, drafted into the army, is forced to go, along with the other draftees. There's flavor of autobiography, too, in the honest assessment of Ariel's resistance to change. She wants to remain the spoiled, arrogant, self-centered girl, whose attraction for men is sadistically used to hurt the men who love her. She wants to keep her outer shell unmarred by any unseemly weakness towards human emotions. She wants to continue to pull the strings, to manage the lives of those about her. Not a pretty picture. It is hard to see wherein lies her vaunted magnetism, her irresistibility. Some of her men see through her- but let her hurt them just the same. As for her ""new face"" this reader is unconvinced. The publishers consider this one of their big finds of the new season. If it gave any flavor of the new land of Israel, any warmth of emotion, possibly the portrait of the girl might emerge fully realized. As it stands, it seems set in emptiness.