Though Laura Hobson, who wrote "Gentleman's Agreement," is undoubtedly a celebrity in her own right, there is nothing autobiographical in ["The Celebrity"], her fourth—and perhaps her best—novel. The story centers on the selection of "The Good World," a novel by the brother of her title character, by a book club "bigger than the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club," and of what follows the bestowal of such an honor…. [We are] given a detailed and intriguing account of the effect of the work's sudden success on Gregory Johns, who wrote it, on his brother Thornton, on their wives, on the book's publishers and their employees, and on a number of others of varying consanguinity.

Gregory, though momentarily shaken by the brouhaha attendant on the production of a best seller, is the only one to emerge from the experience substantially unchanged. The others are scarred beyond repair by association, however tenuous, with "a runaway best seller."

The story of these changes—and of Gregory's resistance thereto—is told with a meticulous calm, a careful understatement which makes it possible for the book to tread close to caricature without losing touch with reality. Mrs. Hobson has not misplaced the ability—so admirably revealed in "Gentleman's Agreement"—to share with the reader her rage at human idiocy without permitting him to take his eye or his mind from a vitally exciting story.

The special idiocy with which we are here confronted is the creation, in our century, of a new and meritless aristocracy, the celebrities who have become such not by any notable accomplishment, but merely by working hard at being celebrities.

Thornton Johns, brother of the author of "The Good World," becomes a member of this aristocracy….

With the development of mass media of communication, almost anyone can become a celebrity, except a man who tells the sort of jokes in which Thornton delights.

This is, however, an extremely small flaw in a compelling and revealing novel. "The Celebrity" offers satisfying support to those who hold that there is as valid Americana to be found on Madison Avenue as on Main Street.