A Long Day

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS--Louis Bromfield--Stokes ($2.50).

This novel took four years to write, but tells of the happenings of only 24 hours. It starts with rich, spiteful old Hector Champion's dinner party in his Manhattan apartment, then follows each diner home: Spinster Savina Jerrold to her spinster-shared brownstone house, her spinster memories; Clubman Jim Towner to his night-club mistress; Tycoon Melbourn first to jilt his paramour, Jim Towner's wife, then to propose honorable marriage to cool, semi-adventuress Mrs. Wintringham; young Philip Dantry to his first night of love with his clay-footed actress idol. Other figures, not so outwardly respectable, join the shifting parade: Gunman Sicily Tony, actual husband of Jim Towner's mistress and still a rival for her affections; Pat Healy, doorman of old Hector's apartment house; "Lucky Sam" Lipschitz, Dave the Slapper, gangsters.

Author Bromfield manipulates the interweaving skeins of his narrative with skill, never gets inextricably tangled up. His style is thin and without distinction but he tells a good story. Perhaps because of his poverty of style you never feel more emotionally concerned for any of his people than if you had met them in the flesh at a dinner party so viciously dull as old Hector's.

Author Bromfield's publicity says he has been having a good time in Holly wood lately, whence he arrived in Manhattan fortnight ago, and will sail for France late this month. He is writing a revue for Girl-Glorifier Florenz Ziegfeld. In it will appear the Astaires (Brother Fred, Sister Adele), Marilyn Miller.

Twenty-four Hours appeared serially in Cosmopolitan under the title "Shattered Glass." It is Bromfield's first novel in two years.

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