Several years' ago Kay Boyle published a short story, "Art Colony," which contained the kernel of this ruefully ironic novel. Outlines which she sketched briefly then have been filled in, and Sorrel, the leader of the colony, has moved from the shadowy wings to the centre of the stage. Miss Boyle, incidentally, makes the conventional statement that all her characters are imaginary, but Sorrel, with his tunics and sandals, his craftwork, his dead wife—in the short story she was his sister—who wanted to teach the whole world to dance, so inevitably suggested Raymond Duncan that one may be pardoned a polite skepticism.

The seamier side of idealism receives scant shrift from Miss Boyle, though her wickedest digs are tempered by a lurking sympathy. Sorrel's colony in Paris, sheltered in a dingy and slackly kept house, has disintegrated sadly since the days of his wife, the dancer. The remaining members are a wrangling, ill-fed, second-rate lot: fewer disciples visit him on Sundays to prance rhythmically in Grecian tunics; the sale of hand-made scarfs and vestments and rugs has fallen off in his shop. Sorrel himself, his shining, filleted hair snow-white, is an aging and a rather weary man.

The scheme of Miss Boyle's novel demands that this pseudo-Utopia be viewed freshly from the outside, and the spectator she has chosen is a young American girl who drifts accidentally into Sorrel's orbit. Victoria arrives penniless in Paris and is unable to find a job. She is rescued by two Russian ladies, half-starved, half-crazy remnants of the old aristocracy, who board in the same gloomy house as herself and who know that Sorrel will offer shelter to strays. They introduce Victoria to him, and she is attracted at once by his lean, benignant Middle-Western face. It is agreed that she shall work for a tiny salary in the shop and share the sternly vegetarian meals of the colony.

Victoria is something of an idealist herself and at first she is mesmerized by Sorrel's gentleness and dignity, his air of sweet saintliness. She refuses indignantly to believe that he has been, and still is, a lustful man, and she consoles herself for the disorder of the colony by blaming—quite justly—his unworthy followers. She defends Sorrel, protects him, steals off with him in quest of the ice-cream sodas which he so childishly and pathetically covets. She shuts her eyes to the charge that he has a snobbish, mercenary streak, and only admits it when, instead of relieving the poverty of his colony, he lavishes a sudden windfall of money on a fine new automobile. Even then she but half condemns him. For all his flaws, he has a quality of nobility which cannot quite be denied.

It is a grave defect of My Next Bride that Victoria is allowed to steal a story which does not rightfully belong to her. Parallel with her adventures in the colony runs the tale of her love affairs—and it is not a very significant or credible tale. She falls in with a wealthy young man, Anthony, who is really desperately in love with his glamourous wife, Fontana, but who permits himself platonic nocturnal excursions with Victoria and talks a lot of involved poppycock. Knowing he is not for her, Victoria turns in desperation to promiscuity, becomes pregnant, and is rescued, in Anthony's absence, by the understanding, all-wise Fontana. There is something suspiciously Michael Arlen about this pair, and all the episodes in which they are involved are so hollow, false and tinselly that one blushes for Miss Boyle.

IFortunately, what one will remember in the book is the picture of the colony—Sorrel the contradictory; the ribald music hall dancers who live in the same house but who are not among the members, the grave, thin children who bear the astonishing names of Hippolytus, Prosperine, Athenia and Bishinka, the silly American women who flutter round the shop. One will remember also the two starving Russian ladies, with their prim black muffs and fur-pieces, their piteous greediness for food, their fierce pride. Muted humor, tinged with pathos, is the keynote of Miss Boyle's book, and she has contributed some, matchless sketches of fantastic waifs and strays.

IEven when one grants her all this, however, My Next Bride raises some sober questions as to the future of Kay Boyle. Her last novel, Gentlemen, I Address You Privately, was distinctly a disappointment to most of her admirers. So, presumably, will this one be. That Miss Boyle is an exquisite craftsman few are blind enough to doubt, but one begins to wonder what use she is going to make of her craft. If she continues to spend herself on trivial material, to foster her tendency toward precociousness, to move further and further away from ordinary life, it will be a sad blow to those who have been quick to recognize her as one of the most gifted and interesting of the younger writers.