Sophisticates Abroad

THE SELBYS -- Anne Green -- Dutton ($2.50).

Once in a long while appears a book which was evidently fun to write. The Selbys is of that class. A first novel, by an apparently sophisticated author, its exuberance is at times almost too much for it, but is always infectious.

Barbara Winship, pretty but penniless orphan from Savannah, Ga., goes to Paris to live with her middle-aged uncle and aunt, the Selbys. Uncle George has a permanent job in Paris; Aunt Virginia has what is almost a salon. They know and bother with few transient U. S. tourists; instead they have good friends among the French bourgeoisie (U. S.: upper classes). When Barbara arrives in Paris she is a small-town Southern girl, almost a type. Her aunt's canny tutelage, her own adaptability, latent good sense, transform her into an original charmer. When she marries good-natured, talented, rich Michel it is a love-match, but satisfactory to all; Mrs. Selby breathes a sigh of relief and goes on a bender with her husband.

Author Anne Green, sister of Julian Green (TIME, Sept. 2, 1929) was born in Savannah, was taken to France as a baby, grew up and was educated in Paris. She is unmarried, in her 30's. Unlike her younger brother Julian, who writes of the French, in French, with grim French realism, Author Anne Green has needed no translator, is no very grisly realist, has gusto, gayety, humor.

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