CHARACTER STUDIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 235, 3 October 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

CHARACTER STUDIES.

«MOTHER OF THE BRIDE." In "Mother of the Bride" (Hodder and Stoughton), Alice Grant Rosman has given us another of her intimate novels of better middle-class people in a London suburb. It is all about a wedding, and the day prior to it, and the bride's father and mother, chiefly the latter. Owing to an "affair" in liis unmarried days between the husband and another woman, he and his wife have been for a considerable time estranged, though there has been no open breach. The mind of each of them is laid bare to us, and we see how they are in love with each other, but imagine they are hateful to each other. The one is moody and abstracted, yet has a certain charm of manner; the other has an aching heart, but hides it and makes herself the life and sou] of the home, and is tireless in her efforts to make tire wedding a success. The members of the family, and their connections, and the guests are also remarkably real. And they comprise quite a variety of types. Miss Rosman is particularly at homo with her women, and she describes them and makes shrewd comments on them, yet without any trace of malice. They all stand out distinct from each other—for example, Mrs. Moreland, "a woman of no mental attainments and a great deal of energy, who liked to keep everyone about her busy," and Mabel, one of the bride's aunts, who is foolish and tiresome and has few friends, which she puts down "to her poverty, her sinal l house, and the snobbery and selfishness of the world." The reader's interest is thoroughly engaged, so that he wonders how things will turn out, and is delighted that the wedding is a success, and that it is followed by a reconciliation between the mother and father. Character sketching, atmosphere, action, conversation, suspense—everything in this story shows Miss Rosman at her best.