Doctor's Odyssey

DR. SEROCOLD--Helen Ashton--Double- day, Doran ($2.50;.

Like James Joyce's famed Ulysses in its unity of time and place, unlike Ulysses in its straightforward, simple narration, Dr. Serocold tells the events of 24 hours in the life of a country doctor. At three in the morning of Dr. Luke Serocold's 65th birthday he closes the eyes of his old friend and partner; at midnight he helps his assistant at a difficult delivery. "The day that had begun with an old man's death had ended with the birth of a child." The time between is filled with his usual rounds: n visits, a mastoid operation. Wherever he goes he sees people he knows as none of their fellow-townspeople can know them, for 40 years he has heard their troubles, patched them up, prescribed for them. Authoress Ashton's method is ingenious, effective; though most of the "action" is reminiscence, seen through the doctor's thoughts, it covers a long time, many people.

Some of his cases: the General, dying manfully of hardening of the arteries; Martha Purefoy, desiccated old maid who should have married him; Lady Cotterick, bullying Lady Bountiful, and her neurotic wreck of a son, only partly rebuilt by plastic surgery; Emily, the Doctor's lifelong love, who tells him today she is dying of cancer, having found time for it at last. All day as he goes his rounds he is his own worst case, for he is waiting for a letter which will give the results of an examination on himself, which he thinks will tell him he too is under sentence of death.

The Author. Helen Ashton (Mrs. A. E. N. Jordan) was a nurse during the War, later studied medicine at the London Hospital. Her first novel. Far Enough, was also based on her medical experience. Handsome, dark, young, she lives in London with her husband. Said he one day: it would be impossible to write a whole book, and make it interesting, about one day in the life of a country doctor. Authoress Ashton fooled him. She wrote most of Dr. Serocold on fishing trips in Ireland, scribbling in little notebooks in a microscopic hand which the rain helped make illegible to anyone else. She has also written three children's books.

Dr. Serocold is the choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club for July.

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