The Moot Point

Potpourri

PETER DE POLNAY is n gifted English novelist (Two Mirrors, The Umbrella Thorn) who has been highly praised — by Cyril Connolly, Elizabeth Bowen — but not yet widely appreciated. His canvas is slight but his touch is subtle, mature, and engagingly distinctive. He writes crisply, with suggestive understatement and sustained irony. His characters are skillfully particularized and revealed by the trivia of everyday existence. The Moot Point. which has to do with murder, is unraveled in the prosaic setting of a British boardinghouse. The cast includes a deaf-mute girl and half a dozen others who seem to be quite ordinary until you get to know them. A novel that is refreshingly different.