THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW PATH

by Honor Tracy ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 1956

There's a bit of the feel of Bruce Marshall here, with broader strokes of humor- verging at times on horseplay- less subtlety, less tenderness. The subject is one made to order for a Bruce Marshall, and Honor Tracy does reasonably well by it. An English anthropologist, recovering from a breakdown in a quiet Irish village, where nothing ever happens, inadvertently pinch hits for a journalist who has had too much of the bottle, and makes a ten strike with a piece for the London paper on the tribal folkways of the Irish (particularly a most unorthodox description of a Midsummer Night's Eve frolic on the part of the nuns in the local convent). The Church- in the person of the Canon, who is persuaded by a local wit and lawyer that he has a profitable case of libel at hand- raises a miniature tempest, and our anthropologist finds he has a cause celebre on his hands, and refuses to buckle under. The battle is on, to the glee of the local townspeople. The squire, a figure of fun to some- and horror to himself- becomes a part of the battle of wits. And before truth is fortified, the case dropped- and the Canon the richer for it, though not as he had planned, the reader has seen the interplay of Church and village in a sometimes riotous farce.

Pub Date: July 30, 1956

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1956

Categories: FICTION