FROM AUSTRALIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

FROM AUSTRALIA.

"Tho Game, Darrells," by Leslie Haylen (Macquarie Head Press), has no plot, and is not so much a story as a description of middle-class Australian social life. Men, women, boys and girls, a little business, some politics, references to tho war, and much domestic detail, and amplo conversation to dilute the descriptions, provide a book which gives no indication that the author has written a successful play, as indeed he has done. 'The .marked ability of the author fails to stand the strain of sustained composition. D. H. Souter's drawings arc in every way quaintly original, peculiar to the artist and to his country. It is quite in accord with truth to say tliat the "BushBabs" nursery rhymes illustrate those excellent and amusing sketches. The Sydney publishers issue a special edition from Wellington (Endeavour Tress). One or two of the pictures in the book rrc unforgettable and worth the cost of tho whole volume. We know that children enjoy both tho versos and pictures, and we have come across 110 better series of animal caricatures, or seen no nonsense verses so racy of the soil. The animals of Australia lend themselves to kindly exaggeration and artistic humour, and Mr. Soutcr has made the best of a long-neglectcd opportunity.

Another Australian packet of fun is Charlie Vaude's "Chuckles," from the Lothian Publishing Company, of Melbourne. Here is a collection of storiettes for general circulation, such as "The worried wife asked her husband, 'What is a silly sheep, in three letters ?' and he replied 'Ewe, dear,' which turned out to be a cross word." There was the man who did not speak to his wife for years because he did not like to interrupt her; and the bishop who met two of his lady church members outdoors in beach pyjamas, and told them to take off those, things immediately. "Chuckles with Charlie Vaudc" is a shillingsworth of laughs quite up to date in style, and interwoven with personal experiences expressed in a score or so of words.