<p>Sebastian Barnack, a handsome English schoolboy, goes to Italy forthe summer, and there his real education begins. His teachers are twoquite different men: Bruno Rontini, the saintly bookseller, who teacheshim about things spiritual; and Uncle Eustace, who introduces him tolife's profane pleasures.</p><p>The novel that Aldous Huxley himself thought was his most successful at "fusing idea with story," <em>Time Must Have a Stop</em>is part of Huxley's lifelong attempt to explore the dilemmas oftwentieth-century man and to create characters who, though ill-equippedto solve the dilemmas, all go stumbling on in their painfully seriouscomedies (in this novel we have the dead atheist who returns in aseance to reveal what he has learned after death but is stuck with asecond-rate medium who garbles his messages).</p><p><em>Time Must Have a Stop</em> is one of Huxley's finest achievements.</p>