ANNETTE

ANNETTE AND SYLVIE--Remain Rolland. Translated from the French by Ben Ray Redman -- Henry Holt ($2.50). Among other notable equipment, the French mind possesses a love of Definition and innumerable definitions of Love. Remain Rolland, who professes that his characters choose him rather than he them, has now been selected by a strong-headed, rich-blooded French virgin (Annette) for the purpose of establishing, beyond all peradventure, certain emotional processes: how she came, after her wild but lovable father's death, to hate her vulgarian half-sister (Sylvie), then to love her passionately; to love an Italian bravo, forget him; then to love burly and brilliant Roger Brissot, then not to love him, then give herself to him, put him aside, become with child and at last find Love within herself. The work is delicate, painstaking; the repitition exhaustive. But the author of Jean Christophe craves--and deserves-- indulgence. Annette and Sylvie is the first movement in another cycle novel, a study, evidently, in cosmopolitan feminism.