STELLA GIBBONS' NOVEL

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

STELLA GIBBONS' NOVEL

SOME HUMAN CHARACTERS

"Xono of the people in the story, but some of the places, arc real," remarks Stella (jlibb'ons in a prefatory note to her novel, "Miss Linsey and Pa" (Longman,s.) The disclaimer, though customary, is often unnecessary, for some authors' characters proclaim their unreality, but several of -Miss (iibbons' people in this, story of life "cribbed, cabined and confined" in the home quarters of London, seem as real as most of the men and women one knows. Besides the real ones, there are a few characters sketched satirically, in the very best manner of the author of "Cold, Comfort Farm," and these nicely balance, the sombre story of Bertha Linsey and her father.

Mr. Linsey was of the ineffectual, small-town petty-shopkeeper type, and when lie failed in business he and his daughter, Bertha, went to London. She looked for work, and found it intermittently, while her savings dwindled. He, lapsing into pathetic senility, became irresponsible, and eventually met ,; i tragic end when humanely trying to release a bird from its cage. The daughter returned each night, after housekeeping or child-minding, to squalid rooms where she faced a hopeless future, but faced it bravely. Many a novelist would present such lives in terms of unrelieved misery, but not Miss, (iibbons. Ifer character-drawing misses no essential detail, particularly no idiosvncracy, ami her sympathy stops short of sentimentalitv.

Near tho Linseys, anil related to them, live the Petleys. father and son, the elder a "tight little mail." who believes in iiiindiiiir his own business, and in seeing that other people mind theirs; and the son, whose initiative has been destroyed by shell-shock, though he clings to the memory of (and at last renews) the one happy episode of his life. Tlie.se four are the enduring- characters. For the reader's malicious enjoyment there is a group of "moderns." There are Dorothy TTooil and E. N. Lassiter, two venous-minded young women who live logetlier in a state of high intellectual earnestness, Bertha reports of them that

At one party they were all talking about something called "My Hliss Hid Stand." 'l'liey seemed I" like it : they put their beads on one side, half shut their eyes, and gave a kind of 11100 whenever anyone said anything about it. "Perfect, of course." "So fresli."

"And all Hint newness one loses later 011 . . . oh, I don't know. It moved inc. It moved ine profoundly." She liennl several of them saying that nothing was so dilHeult to recapture as tlint dew-clear freshness of a child's world. Fun 11 v sort of kinds tlie.v must have been, 1 bought Miss Mnsey, circling with the sherry. A few smacked behinds in those (lays (not meaning to be vulgar) would have saved a lot of trouble later 011.

Then there, were Perdita James and her husband, who lived ill the slums on principle. Their house was not beautiful. "A colossal chimney shot lip at one end of it. This was much admired by Perdita's friends because it was a direct statement. A few years ago it would have been admired as a symbol, but symbols were out." Their child, Tabiatha, was being brought up like an "unspoiled" South Sea islander, "perfectly happy, without any religion and any art." " Xo Bible stories, 110 fairy tales, 110 toys except shells and one or two carved wooden dolls. It was diflicult for Miss Linsey not to break the rules ,in this house, and when she did so the' results were surprising, but only to the parents. Miss Gibbons is extremely competent in doing what she sets out to do; she never gives the impression of writing herself out. The result is a novel that is convincing, and in many passages a joy to read.