LEAVE HER to HEAVEN,

by Ben AmesWilliams '10. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1944,429 pp., $2.50.

Ben Ames Williams is the latest to lay bare the ugly desires and actions of the selfish, predatory female who is now the protagonist of countless novels, plays, and motion pictures. The use of such a central character presents a pretty problem in art. What is to interest the sophisticated reader who no longer is excited by exposure of the fact that all women do not belong to "America's pure and ■enlightened womanhood"? Only the close examination of intellectual motivation can long •carry interest. Falstaff, lago, Edmund, Becky Sharp are interesting because they know what they do and can back their actions with a scheme of life. But selfish and thoughtless egocentricity is dull. So the mere solipsist in feminine evil is as boring and as unconvincing as the genteel female of Victorian fiction. Mr. Williams comes up against this fundamental fact, and his particular ability is not for the subtle nuance or delicately exposed psychology which might conquer the difficulty.

About one quarter of the book, however, is occupied by a thrilling trial scene which is skillfully handled. It is by all odds the best of the book and one accepts the less vigorous • chapters as instrumental to this intense conclusion; The novel is a psychological "whodunnit" and it would be unfair to sketch the

plot more than to say it furnishes the gradual exposition o£ a ruthless, murderous, all-destructive woman who nearly catches her husband in the intricate net of her scheming even after she is dead. Perhaps readers will share my feeling that Mr. Williams belongs to a more virile and active world than that of this novel.