THE GRAND-MATRIARCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 156, 3 July 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GRAND-MATRIARCH.

AMERICAN FAMILY CHRONICLE FANNIE HURST'S NOVEL. I "Groat Laughter" (Jonathan Cape) by ."liss Fannie Hurst, is a "family novel" of the kind which is commonly prefaced by a genealogical tree to introduce readers to complicated family relationships. Miss Hurst's novel is true to type, in that the table can be found at the beginning of its first chapter, but her readers will agree that they did not need it to introduce them to the Ncale family, nine eons and daughters though they be, for Miss Hurst's separate introduction of the children is perfectly done, and they are separate and distinct personalities right from their first appearance. The nine Neales, with their mother, and a husband and wife or two, live under the matriarchal roof of old Gregrannie Campbell, their grandmother, who, having made a future out of land speculation, keeps up the old New York house as a shelter for such of her descendants as choose from time to time to avail themselves of it. The action in the novel covers fourteen years of Gregrannie'g life, and though she is 100 years old when the story closes, one feels that the indomitable old woman will survive the Wall Street crash, with which the story ends, and will bo heard of again at 110, as vigorous as ever. We are never shown Gregrannie except under the roof of the house in St. Luke's place; this is not to say that Miss Hurst gives us no change of scene, for the story follows each of the children in turn. Most of these play their parts in New York, but May goes to Hollywood, Abbey to Moscow, and John to New Zealand and Australia. All (save Abbey) come home, however, to lay their success or failure at the feet of old Gregrannie. While the vitality of many American writers spends itself on the description of homes and ehithes and the good things of life, Miss Hurst uses her powers for more than this. Her story pulses with human interest, and carries the reader along wholly absorbed in its intricacies, while some of the situations are so sympathetically handled as to move the reader to an unusual pitch of emotion. Perhaps the most skilful, and certainly some of the most movinjr passages in the book, are those which deal more sympathetically than one can remember in any other novel, with the abnormal Louis, "the seeker who was never to find." There are weaknesses in the book, notably the tendency to overluscious description, and the conversations between Chauncey and Carmella, which do not seem to rin<r true. But it is ungrateful to point out such minor defects in a book which Miss Hurst has packed full of good things.