Neo-Romantic

MY NEXT BRIDE--Kay Boyle--Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

Last week Author Kay Boyle published a book at least a hundred years old. No copycat, she simply revealed the historical fact that she and her fellow-romanticists (Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner) have succeeded in bringing off a 20th Century Romantic Revival. Like their early 19th Century predecessors, they have rediscovered the romanticism of the neurotic. To a generation that discusses nightmares in daylight, the nightmare-stuff these writers handle seems the only thing that dreams are made of.

Author Boyle, neoRomantic, writes of queer people, queer doings. My Next Bride, her latest, treats of a universal disease that is peculiarly virulent in the U. S.; expatriatitis. None of Author Boyle's characters is quite normal but they all have a normal, mortal longing to go home. Those who are not physically prevented find other barriers in their way. Heroine of her tale is a young girl, Victoria, who has cast off her family and country to find "something" abroad. In Paris, nearly on her uppers, she is befriended by two Russian spinster sisters, who introduce her to a simple-life colony presided over by one Sorrel, gentle U. S. fanatic. Victoria, who takes things as they come, soon makes a place for herself in Sorrel's crazy circus, keeps clear of bickering and intrigues, treats aging Pundit Sorrel like an understanding daughter.

When Antony, a rich, chattering but intelligent expatriate, discovers Victoria, she finds him disturbingly attractive. Antony is happily married, tells her all about his wife, Fontana. Antony falls in love with her, and her allegiance to Sorrel begins to waver. When Sorrel makes senile love to her, when the colony breaks up in mutual recrimination, Victoria in despair debauches herself with one man after another, but never with Antony. Antony leaves for the U. S. on business. Victoria discovers she is pregnant, makes herself ill by overdoses of pills. Fontana comes to find her, is taking her to a hospital for an abortion when they both see the headline announcing Antony's suicide.

Author Boyle is more concerned with writing sinewy sentences than in building the bony structure of an articulate novel. Like her earlier books, My Next Bride is really a loosely-organized collection of short stories, some of them brilliant.

The Author. Kay Boyle's parents took her abroad at an early age, introduced her to the arts, then lost their money, and went into the garage business in Cincinnati. Be tween shifts as telephone operator in her father's office Kay Boyle wrote voluminously, met and married a French engineering student at the University of Cincinnati. At 19 she went to France with her husband, has lived there ever since (she is now 31). Two years ago she married Author Laurence Vail, by whom she has" two daughters, one named Apple (see cut). Says Expatriate Boyle: "In literature, I have never wholly liked the work of women with the exception of Gertrude Stein. Tact and complacency have long been woman's attributes, and I think they prove a drawback to good reading. They do not write simply or violently enough for my taste. I should like my prose to be lucid, direct and lean." Other books: Plagued by the Nightingale; Year Before Last; Gentlemen, I Address You Privately.

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