Return of Cytherea

THE PARTY DRESS--Joseph Hergesheimer--Knopf ($2.50).

This is Author Hergesheimer's first novel since 1926, his first novel of contemporary U. S. life since Cytherea.

Nina Henry, fair, slim, 40, has just bought her first Paris dress. It makes her husband uneasy, herself unusually alluring, other men unusually allured. At a party at the country club she almost forgets she is the mother of two grown children, a respectable matron in a small U. S. town. When she meets Chalke Ewing, a Cuban sugar planter who hates the U. S., the expatriate brother of her best friend, she does forget herself, falls in love with him, and lures him into spending the night with her. But she has him only to lose him; he goes back to Cuba, leaving Nina to look at her husband with resigned but disillusioned eyes.

Author Joseph Hergesheimer, middleaged, fat, placid, writes with great care and with such involved, Henry-Jamesian qualification that he sometimes irritates. But he always manages to spin a compelling yarn. A Pennsylvania "Dutchman" (German), he was left some money at 21, began to write because he helped a woman novelist read her proof, disliked what he read. His first story he rewrote 20 times, parts of it 100 times; did not succeed in selling a story till 14 years later. He lives well in West Chester, Pa., collects antiques, is married. Other books: The Three Black Pennys, Quiet Cities, Tubal Cain, The Lay Anthony, Mountain Blood, Wild Oranges, Tampico, Swords and Roses, The Bright Shawl, Java Head, Balisand, From an Old House, The Dark Fleece, The Happy End, Cytherea, Linda Condon, San Cristobal de la Habana.

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