The unifying consciousness in the three novellas comprising Sermons and Soda-Water is that of Jim Malloy, who narrates all three in the first person. Malloy is O'Hara's most closely autobiographical character; he first appeared in the title story of O'Hara's first collection of short stories/ The Doctor's Son (1935), as the son of a small-town doctor who, like O'Hara, resists the pressure to follow in his father's professional footsteps and instead becomes a journalist. In Sermons and Soda-Water, Malloy, like O'Hara, is in a reflective mood; each novella is composed of a personal reminiscence in which other characters take center stage for a time, but in which Malloy is a consistent presence and voice. Some of the same characters appear in "The Girl on the Baggage Truck" and "We're Friends Again," the first and third novellas, especially Junior and Polly Williamson, a Long Island socialite couple whose lifestyle recalls...