SMALL TOWN GIRL

By Ben Ames Williams '10. E. P. Dutton, New York, 1935. With Ben Ames Williams it is usually a plot based upon a given situation that catches the fancy of his readers. For many years this writer has been creating stories with New England backgrounds which have been widely read, so much so that the Williams type of story has thousands of "fans." These stories are always entertaining and readable and if published in the spring grace many a vacationist's sachel.

Take this formula: two girls, Emily and Kay are raised in a New Hampshire town, and their parents have ambitions to give both the benefits of a college education. One of them finishes Wellesley and returns home with some vague dreams of marrying someone outside her own environment but finally settles down to a school job and marries the village grocer. The other, Kay, determines to win out over environment, and her determination not to return to the rural atmosphere is the motive force of the book. If Mr. Williams has any subtle purpose it may be hinted at in the question of one of the characters to whom Kay pours out her complaint against returning to the village after leaving college, "What's the matter with the village grocer?"

Though this book is, as are many of Mr. Williams' books, entertaining rather than stirring, and falls short of the writer's masterpiece "Splendor," there is considerable demand for this type of writing. Among Mr. Williams' "fans" he can count a scholarly gentleman who had read much and deeply of classics and conventional literature who always called for the reading of a Williams story in the Satevepost or in book form. It is the framework of these lighter stories that holds the experienced reader, for the writer knows technique thoroughly, has worked out his plot logically and though his people are more or less puppets they move in definite courses and all arrive at the point which Mr. Williams wishes to emphasize.

The successor to "Splendor" is being eagerly awaited by an army of Williams "fans."