Volume 28, Number 15 · October 8, 1981
Innocents
By Patricia Craig
The Temptation of Eileen Hughes
by Brian Moore
Farrar Straus & Giroux, 211 pp., $11.95
A Gift Horse and Other Stories
by Kate Cruise O'Brien
George Braziller, 128 pp., $8.95
Eileen Hughes, in Brian Moore's new novel (his thirteenth), is a Northern Irish shopgirl who is taken up by her employers. If she is also taken in, she has no one but herself to blame. There is something a little willful and perverse in Eileen's innocence. When the rich McAuleys, Mona and Bernard, owners of the department store where Eileen works, whisk the girl off to London for a holiday, both she and her mother commend their generosity and Eileen's luck. There is no thought of looking for a flaw in the arrangement. What could be more natural? A childless couple (though the wife is still only thirty), struck by some captivating quality in the young shop assistant. If it pleases them to make a fuss of Eileen, though the girl has nothing special to recommend her, it is surely a harmless and agreeable impulse.
Review, 2443 words
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