TORTILLA FLAT

An utterly unprecedented sort of book, and hard to analyze in its unique charm. Danny, a Paisano of Monterey, California, inherits two houses, and he and his friends who gather round, live in them. This is the story of their adventures and misadventures, stealing, cozening, deviling their neighbors, plotting the acquisition of food and money without work. They rescue Danny from feminine wiles, they are in and out of jail, they are never bad but unbelievably naughty. The simplicity of the telling is wholly disarming — the humor, though unostentatious, brings many a chuckle. Imagine characters that might have been handled in the Caldwell vein, turned over to Robert Nathan — and you approximate Tortilla Flat. Try it out on very special customers, sophisticated, but not smartly so; those who liked February Hill, for instance, should like this, as it is "amoral" without being really shocking. Some one of the staff should read it, surely.