Lovingly Well-Made Novel

The Malefactors, by Caroline Gordon. 312 pp. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. $3.95

The very morning I sat down to write this review, the front page of the New York Times carried a story about Miss Dorothy Day and the House of Hospitality she has maintained for years on Manhattan’s lower East Side for anyone who is tired, or broken, or hungry, or in need of human warmth. Miss Day had been fined $250 because the New York Department of Housing and Buildings had declared her hostel a firetrap. On her way to court, she was approached by a stranger who said he had read about her trouble in the paper and offered her a check to help out. She thanked him, and hurried on. Not until she had boarded her subway did she notice that the check covered the entire amount of the fine, and was signed by one of the most honorable names in English poetry: W. H. Auden.

RB

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The Malefactors, by Caroline Gordon. 312 pp. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. $3.95

The very morning I sat down to write this review, the front page of the New York Times carried a story about Miss Dorothy Day and the House of Hospitality she has maintained for years on Manhattan’s lower East Side for anyone who is tired, or broken, or hungry, or in need of human warmth. Miss Day had been fined $250 because the New York Department of Housing and Buildings had declared her hostel a firetrap. On her way to court, she was approached by a stranger who said he had read about her trouble in the paper and offered her a check to help out. She thanked him, and hurried on. Not until she had boarded her subway did she notice that the check covered the entire amount of the fine, and was signed by one of the most honorable names in English poetry: W. H. Auden.