Scollay Square – Pearl Schiff

EVEN Boston has its tender- loin districts. One of them slopes off the fringes of Beacon Hill and is known as Scollay Square. Scollay was a “liberty town” through World War II, and it is of this time in this place that Pearl Schiff writes in a first novel at once distin- guished for its brutal candor and reportorial skill.

Scollay Square is “a catchy tune with dirty lyrics,” and among those singing it within the taverns, movies and penny arcades sprawling along its brightly lit course are derelicts, bookies, short-order cooks, bar- tenders, drunks, sailors and girls. Especially sailors and girls. Not all the liberties in- volved come free, of course, and sometimes the price is to be measured in heartaches and despair rather than money. But some of the temporary attach- ments of the square come to bloom. It is to Miss Schiff’s credit that she sees the humani-ties as well as the nihilisms of her scene.