Melodrama .

SHADOWS WAITING--Eleanor Carroll Chilton--John Day ($2.50). This novel opens when Haeckla (heroine) has just picked a jonquil. She has been trying for days to pick up and read the manuscript of Shadows Waiting, a novel sent her by Dennis (hero). The fact that the jonquil was a bud when the manuscript arrived, and has now grown to be a great big jonquil reminds Haeckla that several days have passed and she must hurry up and read whatever it is that Dennis has sent her. On p. 7 she unwraps it. On p. 93 she gets down to reading it. On p. 180 she has finished. Then there are 109 more pages. The novel--that is to say--consists of interpolations: the fleeting memories and thoughts of Haeckla. To put it another way the cover blurb quotes Miss Chilton as saying that this is "a melodrama of the intellect." For an embryo novelist to attempt a plan so diffuse and snatchy is more than bold. To pull it off without creating boredom would have been magnificent-- but the book bores. When all is said and done, Haeckla and Dennis were torturing their souls about nothing--and only a great novelist can fling the mantle of Art about a nothingness, then convince the reader that there is a live spook inside the sheet after all. The book is not "promising," and the authoress need not be "watched," but her courage, persistence, and a certain as yet wavering flair for the mot juste make this a far from mediocre "first." First-Novelist Chilton is daughter of onetime U. S. Senator W. E. Chilton (West Virginia).