Post-Wodehouse

HARLEQUIN HOUSE--Margery Sharp--Little, Brown ($2.50).

Margery Sharp is a bright-eyed, diminutive, facetious English girl whose The Nutmeg Tree was a surprise best-seller two years ago. As a followup, Harlequin House is less surprising; it tells a bouncing, bubbling, frankly inconsequential story about giddy Lisbeth and her shiftless brother Ronny, with Lisbeth managing four men at once in a campaign to reform Ronny who had spent six months in jail for somebody else's racket.

Lisbeth's other three men include an impeccable fiance, an amiable American whom she met on a merry-go-round, a middle-aged Londoner with 152 pairs of red socks, who is mesmerized so completely that even Lisbeth cannot break the spell she casts over him. Mostly pleasant nonsense, Harlequin House is sometimes so addled that a reader is diverted by wondering how Author Sharp can unscramble her puzzle. He finds that she fits it together so neatly that nothing is lacking but a point.

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