SOME RECENT FICTION.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 89, 21 May 1914, Page 5

SOME RECENT FICTION.

TWO NEW AMERICANS. , "The Streak," by David Potter (J. P. Lippincott and Co., per George Robertson and Co.) is one of the best novels of American authorship that I have read for some time past. The scene is laid in the Philippines/whither Dick Nelson, a wealthy young merchant at Manila, takes his American-born wife. Nelson, who has Filipino blood in his veins, although he has carefully concealed the fact from his wife, is ambitious, and rashly engages in a Filipino revolutionary movement which is assisted by Japan. Also, in course of time, he. tires of his wife, and engages in a dangerous intrigue with another woman. The Filipino plot is unmasked; and foiled by an American Constabulary officer, who falls in love with Mrs Nelson.' His love is returned, but despite her revulsion against her husband when she discovers his. mixed parentage, and her suspicion of his infidelity, the wife . remains loyal. In the end, Nelson is killed in a motor accident, and the American officer marries his widow. The author is very successful in making the reader realise the difficulties,' political and social, with which the Americans have to contend in the Philippines, and. the local colour of the story is vividly picturesque. Altogether a novel much out of the common, both in plot and style.

In '' Her Word of Honour'' (Little, Brown and Co., per George Robertson and Co.), Edith Macvane gives us an amusing, if rather carelessly written novel, the heroine of which, a young lady of- aristocratic parentage, half English, half French, goes to America', and finding herself alniost moneyless and friendless, agrees to the proposition of an immensely wealthy and socially am : bitious New York lady, Mrs Cobb, that she shall marry the latter's only son, Victor, the mother being attracted by the fact that the girl is the daughter of a French marquis and niece of a real live English duchess. The pretty little French girl agrees to the "climber's" proposals, butw .hen she sees her fiance an uncouth and vulgar fellow, is inclined to revolt. A typical American herb, turns up, and falls in love with her. But the fair Lili has pledged the sacred word of a De Vanquieres, and honour forbids the breaking of the engagement she has come to loathe. ' It goes without saying that the author does not permit that sacrifice but how honour is satisfied at no cost to true love, I must not say.' The victory is worth reading, if only for the well-drawn portrait of Mrs Cobb, who, as a '"would-be" is decidedly original and daring in her society "climbing" methods.

LpTTEEIES OF CIRCUMSTANCE. Many novels of late have dealt With German military life, but "Lotteries of Circumstance," by R. C. Lynegrove (Methuen and Co.) is to be welcomed for its pictures of every day middleclass'life in a German town, and the intimacy of its account of their family life. The story deals, for the most part, with the matrimonial experiences of two sisters, Gisela and Minna Luise, daughters of a retired and much impoverished officer, Baron Adlersheim. The elder sister, a, «entle and unselfish creature, marries an egotistical selfish fellow, the son of a minor official, a Health Inspector ■Gubbehmeyer, whose wife is as vulgar as himself* ■• The younger Franklein Adlersheim, who has visited England, and is as flirtuous as she is socially ambitious, philanders for a time, and at the risk of moral shipwreck, with a rich

but empty-headed young officer, and eventually secures the prize. Poor Gisela, much the finer character of the two sisters, dies in childbirth, but the selfish Minna Luise manages to evade the ruin of her matrimonial position, and in the.end is happy enough with her conceited and stupid spouse. The author has evidently made a close study of German family life, and, although his satirical portraits are.at times a triEe cruel, they carry with them the impression, of truth. Minna's English experiences afford opportunity for several curious comparisons between British and German social customs.

THE MILKY WAY. "The Milky Way" (Wm. Heinemann, per George Robertson and Co.) by F. Tennyson Jesse, is, I should, say, the first novel of a lady author. It is the. latest addition to the now long list of recently published novels in which the delights of the "simple life" and. a roadside Bohemianism jare 'extolled... ;It has both humour, and pathos, and some of its episodes.are described in" a vein of gay philosophy; which is as enjoyable] as are the many purely , humorous | touches. The heroine is a young art student, who, stranded in Cornish seaport town, makes Wer way to London on a "tramp" steamer, where! she meets and ' * chums up " with an equally* impoverished young journalist, who plays the flute, and is as happily irresponsible as herself. . The further adventures of the pair, together with an .amusing little child whom the penniless heroine courageously adopts, are set forth in a highly entertaining way. Eventually the light-hearted Viva and her youthful Peter "strike oil," in the shape of a commission to write and illustrate books in the old' Provencal cities, and the scene then changes to ; Southern France, where their experiences ; are /fully as droll as those they have met with on the "Milky Way" of romance, as "they have followed it along the country.,.rQads of England. Wedding bells, .of course, are heard in the final chapter- ? A very jolly book, albeit, I fear, in actual everyday life, the, light-hearted hero and heroine mighi/ have found fortune less kind. f .

SHORTER NOTICES. ' ' Ineffectual Fires,'' by E. M. Smith-' Dampier ,(Melrose, per George Robertson and Go.) is a ponderously written story of'the disillusions of a young man, who inherits, through his Italian mother, a taste for art, and dreams of becoming famous as a painter. The scene is laid partly in Norfolk, partly in Italy, with a brief interlude in London —the London of Sir Joshua Reynolds 's time. It is a somewhat painful story, for Benedict Shaw, who is certainly very scurvily treated by Dame Fortune, never realises his ambition, and dies a, miserable death at Florence, where, rejected by an English girl he has long and dearly loved, he marries the termagant daughter of a rascally Italian Jew.

In "The Chain of Ob," by St. Clair Harnett (Andrew Melrose, per George Robertson), are related the experiences strongly 'tinged by the supernatural, of a young Londoner, who accompanies a friend to an old Cornish mansion which the latter has inherited. The hero meets a pretty little ghost, who first takes him back into the time of »the late Stuarts, and, on later occasions, is apparently reincarnated in a foolish and extravagant young lady, all of the present day. The story is told with the evident intention of impressing its readers with an air of probability. The execution, however, is hardly equal to the design:

Dolf Wyllarde's new story "In. the Time of Roses," (George BelFan,d Sons, per Whitcombe and Tombs), gives many interesting pictures of West Indian life, the hero, a young Englishman of good family, taking over a neglected plantation, having, through the disappearance of a will been deprived of English estates of great value which he had considered himself the heir. Digby Barrel's experiences in the lonety island of Alousie are complicated by the somewhat tempestuously expressed affection which a French Creole girl showers upon him, but returning to England, he marries his cousin Barbara. A cyclone destroys the Aloxisie ..homestead and the missing will is discovered by the faith-.* ful. Creole igirl- who, however, loses her life in the securing of it. Dolf Wyllarde has written a wholesome; interesting and very .readable story. ,

"Thrcnigh pther Eyes," by" Amy M'Laren (John Murray; per Whitcombe and Tombs) Is a slight but pretty story 6f English country life by the author of that excellent novel, "With the Merry Austrians." Miss M'Laren introduces us to some very pleasant young people, who both speak and act with a cheerful disregard for conventionalities." "*There is a good angel in the story, a crippled young woman, Miss Sunshine, who lives with ia delightful oltt rustic as housekeeper, in a'little cottage on "the edge of ':' a great''estate 1 . A "brusque, but good-hearted squire, and hia w'ell : meauin'g,'/but, for a time, rather cruelly.misunderstood wife, are also excellent characters. The story is somewhat lacking in motif but'is possessed of' a simple charm of its own which is decidedly fascinating.