When Half-Gods Go

THE GODS ARRIVE--Edith Wharton-- Appleton ($2.50).

Edith Wharton lets one of her characters say: "I'm rather in a difficulty about you American novelists. Your opportunity's so immense, and . . . well, you always seem to write either about princesses in Tuscan villas, or about gaunt young men with a ten-word vocabularly who spend their lives sweating and hauling wood. Haven't you got any subject between the two?" The Gods Arrive, like all Wharton novels, is a pat answer to this petulant query: its people and problems are U. S. middleclass.

Halo Tarrant and her cold husband had come to the parting of the ways even before she began to fall in love with Vance Weston, Midwestern novelist of charming honesty and unstable character. When Halo ran off to Europe with Vance, her husband's cold vanity was wounded; he refused to give her a divorce. For a while she did not mind. She was sure Vance had the makings of a great writer; in the meantime they would have a grand time discovering Europe together. But Vance turned out to be unexpectedly impressionable. New people and places, if they did not upset him, influenced him too much. Soon Halo found herself neglected, left alone while Vance went off on expeditions with friends or to parties where she was not invited. When Floss Delaney, Vance's boyhood love, drifted across their scene, Vance went after her like a helpless dog. Both Halo and Vance had bad times: he left her so often and so long that finally she was afraid he had gone for good. But at last, safely back in the U. S., Halo got her divorce, Vance found Floss was not unlike a dog herself, learned that where Halo was was home to him.

The Author. Edith Newbold Jones Wharton, 70 last January, still writes like a woman a generation younger. Born a Manhattan socialite, tutored abroad, summered at Newport, she overcame her early handicaps and became a surprisingly serious novelist. Her novelette Ethan Frame is still spoken of respectfully by bumptious younger critics. Though she has lived in France since 1906, her books have been stanchly U. S. products, except for a pro-French interlude during the War. By her juniors she is rated respectfully as an old lady writer of surprising youth, surprising up-to-date notions. Among her many books: The House of Mirth, Old New York, The Age of Innocence, The Glimpses of the Moon, Twilight Sleep, Hudson River Bracketed.

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