Books: The Editors Like

THE SEAGULL ON THE STEP by Kay Boyle. (Knopf, $3.50.) The allegory on international relations underlying this tale is not particularly effective, but the tale itself, about an American girl caught up in some peculiar shenanigans in southern France, is highly readable.

THE DAY OF THE MONKEY by David Karp. (Vanguard, $4.50.) A native rising in an unidentified British protectorate is used to illustrate various forms of political folly, from misguided brutality to ineffectual enlightenment.

TOO NEAR THE SUN by Cordon Forbes. (Rinehart, $3.50; Dell, 35¢.) Sex, liquor, and chatter fill this tragicomic novel about a psychopathically jealous lover. Mr. Forbes has a wonderful ear for bright jabber and has also constructed the most deadly drunken party in several seasons.

QATABAN AND SHEBA by Wendell Phillips. (Harcourt, Brace, $5.00.) Mr. Phillips describes two archaeological expeditions that he headed in southern Arabia — one highly successful, the other an expensive disaster. Both are fascinating mixtures of historical discovery and slam-bang adventure.

THE GATES OF THE SEA by Philippe Diolé. (Messner, $4,50.) A new sort of travel book, the author’s Sicilian observations are half on the island and half under the surrounding sea.

THE UNDERWATER NATURALIST by Pierre de Latil. (Houghton Mifflin, $3.75.) Basically, this is a report on certain Mediterranean fish, but it is so packed with amusing asides and good fisherman’s yarns that it cannot be classed as an ichthyological specialty.

SORCERERS’ VILLAGE by Hassoldt Davis. (Duell, Sloan & Pearce — Little, Brown, $5.00.) Mr. Davis, who dotes on Africa and Africans, describes his hunt through the Gold Coast for a rumored school of witches. Lively, funny, sympathetic, full of picturesque oddities, the book is a delight.

RETURN TO LAUGHTER by Elenore Smith Bowen. (Harper, $3.50.) Ail anthropologist who studied an African tribe by living with it describes the effect this experience had on her, which turns out to be not quite what one would expect.

GILBERT STUART by Jamas Thomas Flexner. (Knopf, $2.50.) Short, fast, vivid, and scholarly, Mr. Flexner’s life of the great and gaudy portrait painter is very nearly a model of what a short biography should be.

KEATS by John Middleton Murry. (Noonday Press, $4.00.) An expansion of an earlier study of Keats, including new material on Fanny Brawne and a belligerent, refutation of the recently advanced theory that the poet carried on a love affair with another lady.

YOUNG SAM JOHNSON by James L. Clifford. (McGraw-Hill, $5.75.) Mr. Clifford undertakes to lift the fog surrounding pre-Boswell Johnson, and does it thoroughly and with considerable spirit.