Lickerish Lacquer

PETAL-OF-THE-ROSE -- Charles Pettit-- Liveright ($2.50).

Not unlike Ernest Bramah's tales of Kai Lung, in its lacquered language of excessive pseudo-Oriental politeness, unlike them in the faintly lickerish tinge of the narrative, Petal-of-the-Rose gives about as realistic a picture of China as a musi-comedy does of life, affords much the same kind of titillating entertainment.

Petal-of-the-Rose was the unwanted daughter of the learned, sensual, hard-hearted aristocrat Ou Tsong Ling. Of no account in her father's eyes, she led a secluded and boring existence shut up in the women's apartments until the Japanese, in revenge for the killing of a French missionary, sent a punitive expedition to the city. Then all the women, including Petal-of-the-Rose, were raped, thought that more lively than doing nothing all day long. Author Pettit writes suavely, ironically, often appositely, of philosophy, Christianity, "the facts of life," protects himself from censorship by his gymnastic euphemisms, Gallic urbanity.

Author Charles Pettit, Frenchman, in his 50's, has had a not uneventful life. Educated at St. Cyr (France's West Point), he was a civil engineer in China during the Boxer Rebellion (1900), made a fortune, lost everything in a typhoon. He served as war correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War, returned to Peking in 1912, assisted the Chinese revolutionary party. During the World War he fought for France, was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. After the War he fought in Russia for the Bolsheviks. Twice he has been condemned to death; by the Bolsheviks, by a Chinese secret society. Now he lives in Paris, on a boat in the Seine. Other books: The Son of the Grand Eunuch, Elegant Infidelities of Madame Li Pei Fou, The Woman Who Commanded $500,000,000 Men.

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