Love in California

ZEST--Charles G. Norris--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

A big $2 worth (445 pp., five love affairs), Zest is the fifth of Author Norris' monosyllabic titles. There is little apparent connection between the title and the story, whose key is given in the motto- quotation from Isaiah: "And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day." All seven in Zest get a good grip on the hero, though (Biblically speaking) he is on knowledgeable terms with only four.

Bob Gillespie was an innocuously ordinary type. Put through college and launched in San Francisco business and society by Woman No. 1, his penny-watching, ambitious mother, his future looked fairly rosy. He should have married Woman No. 2, Dixey, with whom he fell in love at college; but she had no money, even less background than Bob, so his mother soon put a stop to that. Woman No. 3, Pen, hollow-chested but popular debutante, had hearty parental approval. Pen was not rich but she had an aged aunt who was. Meantime Bob became pleasantly entangled with Woman No. 4, Sadie, a stenographer in his office; she gave him many an opportunity to carry out his dishonorable intentions. Pen, jilted by a naval officer, married Bob out of pique. When the rich aunt died she left them very little, and they had a hard time. Soon Bob realized he should have married null No. 5, his sister-in-law Julia, a placid and motherly Jewess. Pen, after presenting him with Woman No. 6, his daughter Barbara, pined for snappier society and insisted on divorcing him.

When the War came Bob had nowhere else to go. He worked so hard as a soldier, did so well that he was finally promoted to major, put in command of a Negro battalion, all venereal cases. Solace in these trying times was Woman No. 7, Bella, lusty wife of a shriveled colonel. Demobilized, Bob went back to San Francisco, married Julia and settled down. Then Bella appeared again, lured him away. But when she took to drink he was disgusted with her. Bella, creature of impulse, shot him in the stomach. The nurse at his deathbed was none other than Dixey, his old college pal.

Author Norris is a prolific rather than a pretty writer, a searcher for the genteel rather than the just word. For "pimple" he writes "eruption"; for "naked," "nude"; for "died," "expired."

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