John Broderick's latest novel, "The Flood," which is set during the 1930's in Bridgeford, Ireland (population 8,767), boasts such a colorful jumble of characters and voices one barely notices that its story is thin and inconsequential.

A colorful jumble of cheese, fruit, meat and vegetables makes Balducci's one of the city's most appealing food stores.

Corn grows in pockets of the garden, which is finally a colorful jumble of plants.

Most of the strange guests in Spaldergate's garden carried parcels or ladies' toiletry and jewel cases, bulging valises, carpet satchels with ironwood grips, all in a colorful and meaningless jumble of haste and nameless excitement.

"Such a colorful jumble," she says, "such a hum of life, such bright hand-woven cottons and embroidered chemises!"

The ground level of Kintame, on the opposite side of Kita Kamakura station from Engakuji temple, lures tourists with its colorful jumble of packages of vacuum-sealed pickles and a variety of appetizing aromas.

Her high-ceilinged office, in the Alexander Hamilton United States Custom House, is a crowded and colorful jumble of indigenous artwork: a Cree Indian goose decoy here, a Brazilian basket there, a Mexican blanket against a wall.

A rather weak sketch of the store window (1961) here shows a yellow shirt, a red bow tie and other objects in a colorful jumble conjured up with Abstract Expressionist fervor.

The colorful jumble passed slowly below, and they were over normal jacs again.

Shirts, pants, underwear and socks make colorful jumbles in wheeled canvas carts and whirl in big metal washers and dryers.