PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 23, 27 January 1940, Page 21

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The City Librarian has chosen "Wickford Point," by John Marquand, as the book of the week, and has furnished the following review:— Mr. Manjuarid is known as the author of satirical work in which he attacks the decadence ' of institutions more particularly from a study of decadent individuals. In this.new book he presents a picture of a family living in complacent isolation on the laurels of a forebear. The story is told by a member of the family who is of it but not in it, and while feeling the attraction of the family lodestone is so remotely situated as to be able to combat it and to take a: dispassionate and objective view.

Mr. Marquand has succeeded in writing a satire which is not only bright but extremely amusing and some of the hits which he makes against American institutions and individuals, might as easily have been scored off their prototypes in our own form of democracy. . "Wickford Point" is by, no means a soothing book, but it is certainly stimulating. RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS. Other titles selected from recent accession lists are as follows:—General: "Hitler's Last Year of Power," by L. Blake; "Present Without Leave," by W. D. Cresswell; "I Haven't Unpacked," by W. Holt. Fiction: "Watch for the Dawn," by S. Cloete; "Let the People Sing," by Jv B. Priestley; "Sown Among Thorns," by E. M. Dell.