Working Woman

THIS PROUD HEART -- Pearl S. Buck--Reynal & Hitchcock ($2.50).

Author Buck's ninth book is her first to deal with the U. S. scene. With all the earmarks of her Chinese novels -- great sincerity, a Biblical-cadenced style-- it also has such narrow escapes from absurdity that sharp-eared readers can hear the squeak. Her present heroine moves in a complex, artistic world but has the courage of her elemental nature. "The thought of trees made her pant," and her genius is ascribed solely to the fact that "she thought mysteriously out of her heart and her bowels."

Dynamic Susan Gaylord, daughter of a frustrated poet, is a natural artist in everything she does -- from sculpting to making gravy. Married at the story's beginning to a big, shy real estate salesman, she becomes the perfect mother and housekeeper, even has her first baby expertly. Meanwhile, her sculpture is only an occasional sideline. Though Susan knows she has it in her, she will not be stampeded into becoming a great artist until she has become a complete woman. When her husband thoughtfully dies of typhoid, she goes to Paris, there proves her genius, marries a handsome, sophisticated, wealthy modernist sculptor. Tempted to settle back into domesticity because her second husband excites her emotionally as her first did not, she comes to her senses just in time, goes to work on a set of heroic figures that no male sculptor would be ashamed to sign. When her husband has an affair with a Russian dancer, she lets it pass. But when he pans her statues, it is the end. They part without rancor. She knew that it wasn't entirely his fault, "she was too much for everyone, and none could fill her and each knew it and went away."

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