Strong Woman

MAY FLAVIN--Myron Brinig--Fair a r & Rinehart ($2.50).

"After the last gabbling articulate human had passed from the earth, a single sunlit raindrop falling on this depopulated planet would hold her for a second in its gleam, remembering her form and mind and strength that had once been here, in one small corner of the globe." Thus, with characteristic bathos, Author Brinig (Singermann, The Sisters) sums up the heroine of his eighth novel, an urban version of Edna Ferber's So Big, written in a style as choked as the author's emotions.

May's story begins in the 80s, when the death of her widowed father, a Chicago cop, leaves her an orphan. May knows how to take care of herself. ("Off with you," she tells the oglers, "or I'll knock the Holy Jesus out of you.") At the same time, "deep down May was an aristocrat, a lady." She proves it by marrying handsome, good-for-nothing Mike Flavin, who takes her to Manhattan, buys a newsstand, leaves her to carry on while he drinks, chases women, finally stabs a man over a "maniac beauty" and skips for good. And although by this time May has six children, she can still say: "Ain't life funny and grand?" Her oldest son turns gangster, is killed. Three daughters become schoolteacher, waitress, fashion model. When two other children become famous Hollywood stars, May goes to live in a Beverly Hills mansion. But she remains unchanged, continues to charm everybody with her full-blooded Bowery simplicity. As with Author Brinig's other novels, the most remarkable thing about May Flavin is that it is offered as further confirmation of Author Brinig's emergence as a coming major novelist.

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