VARIOUS NOVELS

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 129, 2 June 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

VARIOUS NOVELS

BERTHA RUCK'S LATEST.

Bertha Ruck has written a good story | for "iris in "Beet Time Ever" (Hodder and Stoughton), in which it is shown how humanising is the influence of compulsory work upon those young women accustomed to luxury, and knowing nothing of the lives of girls living entirely on scant wages. The authoress describee the homes of the very rich, and the one-room lodging of the worKino- girl, and advises the rich girl to regard with suspicion the "flash' young man of her own class, and look for manliness, honour and truth, in one o the crowd of male workers who Will disregard her money and accept her toi herself. There is a good film version of this amusing story yet to be made,

"The Padre of St. Jacob's" (Ivor Nicholson and Watson) is the latest book by Stephen Graham. We have read other books bv Mr. Graham that we have liked better. The padre is specially interested in the conversion of shady characters, and we are introduced to a few of them. He has associated with him another clergyman, but neither of them is a type one meets with in actual life. And neither of them inspires one with respect. The padre is peculiarly unconventional and is "inclined to"be bored by stories of religious experience unless they contained a good deal of fleshly sin," and though, in a way, he is an astute man of the world, he "is easily gulled by one of his ''converts," a crook, and fleeced of his all. Some of the characters are caricatures; for example, a general "with a shaven face, feminine in senility," who is "writing an extremely wordy war novel," and an evangelist who has "a brass band," and is only too willing, for a substantial fee, to come with his band "and raise the Gospel shout at St. Jacob's." The story is not without cleverness, and may attract some, but it will repel and grate on others.

'. A tragic love story of old Scotland, in 22 chapters, each one of which compels the reader to hasten on to the next, is "The Old Woman Speaks," by Anne Hepplo (Angus and Robertson). This attractive and exciting history of the devotion of a manly, handsome, deformed lover and an aristocratic young "waster," to an elfin daughter of an eccentric country gentleman, includes a wholly credible mystery, two weddings, and the clever study of many characters, with whom the reader becomes quickly intimate. "The Old Woman Speaks" reminds one of Arnold Bennett's "Old Wives' Tale."

"Unfinished Portrait," by Mary Wcstmacott (Collins), is the life-story, from infancy to the age of 39, of a very ordinary young woman of a middle-class English family. It is the ordinariness which nlakes the attraction of the story. Tho girl is not of modern type, but of the.class which still admits the parental authority and is quite ignorant of the ways of men. .This leads to adventure, alarm, and disappointment, and spurts of happiness, overshadowed by doubts, depression and fear, until, at a critical moment, a really masterful man arrives and carries her qff.

"All About Jane," by Pamela Wynne (Collins), is the story of a self-neglect-ing companion-help who is brought to self-expression, happiness and love by an up-to-date young woman of a good heart, and superficially immodest, whoso chief desire is to see everybody as happy as good health, many friends and plenty of money have enabled her to know.

"Even Such is Time," by Dorecn Wallace (Collins) is a heavy bit of reading, with a reward near the end. The history of a middle-class London family, broken up by adversity and driven to the outer radius of agricultural land. The life here is too uneventful for tho authoress to make any headway beyond some good descriptions of climate and scenery. The widowed mother of the family marries again, one son leaves the plough and cream and goes to Oxford, another son enlists, and one daughter takes the R.A.M. degree. It is all very stiff and ordinary, and even the military husband and mercurial country doctor cannot lift the story above mere readuntil the hospital scene at the end, which is done quite simply and naturally'and therefore well.