NOVEL

John P. Marquand, So Little Time. All but forgotten today, this 1943 study of a disappointed playwright who married up and sold out is also a powerfully evocative snapshot of America on the eve of World War II. It’s not a great book by any means, and Marquand would work the same turf more effectively in Point of No Return and Women and Thomas Harrow, but I can’t think of another American novel that does a better job of suggesting what it felt like to watch the world sliding toward catastrophe (TT).