At Madame Bonnard's

New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Very Good. 1935. First Edition. Hardcover. NOISBN . (no dust jacket) [moderate wear and slight fraying at most corners, tiny rips in cloth at base of spine, still a sound, clean copy]. Uncommon novel, the first of three by this Depression-era author, who might be completely forgotten today if it hadn't been for the reprinting of his second book, "Man's Courage" (1938), in the 1980s. Although cited somewhat dismissively by Rideout as a "novel of middle-class decay," it's more interesting than that implies. The titlular establishment, although its name carries the whiff of a brothel, is actually a rooming-house on New York's West side, populated (of course) by a motley group of individuals -- "each haunted by the specter of Old Debbil Depression," as one contemporary reviewer put it. This sort of set-up was already a well-worn trope by the mid-1930s, but the author seems to have made a better-than-usual job of it. Unsurprisingly, had lived in such a place himself, and in fictionalizing it wrote (according to the same reviewer) "with a sharp, strong stroke" and noted that "his book carries a ring of sincerity that makes one realize that there is a surplus of sham, immorality and cruelty in this world." Another critic praised the author for his "humor, compassion and good-natured cynicism, [following] in the ironic tradition of Voltaire and, more immediately, Anatole France." . (Inventory #: 19070)