"SO THEY BEGAN."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 175, 25 July 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

"SO THEY BEGAN."

MR. GUTHRIE'S NEW NOVEL. ADVENTURE AND GAIETY. The memorable quality in John Guthrie's second novel, "So They Began'' (Nelson, London) is its exuberance. He makes one of his characters reflect that

"when wo boiled things down gaiety and pluck were the things that mattered most in a new country," and in this story he has endowed his men and women with gaiety and pluck in overflowing measure. If this was New Zealand, iiis readers will think, then people have lost something valuable since the turn of the century. They may not have lost the pluck, but they have lost the gaiety. Their pleasures are more diverse, but their enjoyment of those pleasures is less intense.

"So They. Began" is the story of Paradise Bay (presumably as New Plymouth) and of Richard Essenden, a wild, red-lieaded half-caste boy, whom the colonists found on the beach when they arrived in the first ship. His mother and English father had been killed in an epic fig» with the Maoris, and he grows up in the loose charge of his father's partner, who educates him (so far as books play a part in his education) on Shakespeare and bookkeeping. He plays an licroic part in repelling a native attack on the settlement, falls heavily in love and is disappointed, and then sets out (in a spirit and manner reminiscent of Anthony Adverse) to seek adventure. Mr. Guthrie might have made him seek that adventure overseas, but it is significant that he did not; there was adventure enough to be found in New Zealand. Essenden goes to C'hristchurch, joins the Great O'Shane in a Shakespearian company, leaves it as abruptly as he has joined it, and sets out for the West Coast. There, in that community whose men work hard, play hard and drink hard, lie finds happiness and, eventually, gold, but in finding the gold he loses a mate. He returns to Wellington, whence, at an instant's notice he rides like Ivochinvar back to Paradise Bay, to attain his heart's desire.

It is a stirring story, but better in its parts than as a whole, for the separate episodes are linked too mechanically. Mr. Guthrie persists in writing of

"Auckburne," "Wellingford" and "St. Christopher," although, inconsistently, he gives several West Coast settlements their proper names. No good purpose seems to be served by this device, unless it is to make it clear to the reader that this is a novel and not a history. There are anachronisms and errors in the-tale, but a more serious fault is that it is over-written, and uproariously funny incidents once or twice degenerate into burlesque.

But, when all criticism has been uttered, Mr. Guthrie has done well. Other New Zealand novels have been technically better, but not one (except

'"The Little Country," which is his own) has been so full-blooded, spirited and gay. His characters, men and women, are strong and physically self-reliant, and tho best of them are mentally selfreliant. At the end, when tho hero has the opportunity of going to England, to live there the life of a country gentleman, he rejects it without hesitation. This is his country and he is a New Xealander and notj,„an imitation Englishman. That closing incident is symbolical of Mr. Guthrie's outlook, and "So They Began" is an assurance that still better novels are to come from his pen.