A LANCASHIRE TALE.

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

A LANCASHIRE TALE.

An increasing number of novelists arc concentrating on the livea that are being lived by present-day working-class people, and most of them, having themselves sprung from working-class. people, are writing with understanding and sympathy. Where they blend humour with their understanding and their sympathy, they give us stories that are not only true but entertaining. T. Thompson is one of the writers in whom we find this combination. He has now added a third to his two previous talee, and it is so well done that it will enhance his reputation as a retailer of stories of humble life in Lancashire. It bears the curious yet appropriate title. "Cuckoo Narrow" "(Allen and Unwin). Cuckoo Narrow, an actual Lancashire place-name, is the name he gives to the industrial town he makes the setting for his story. Here wc have singled out for us a humble family* and are shown the lifo they lived, their work, their associations with their neighbours', their vicar and his association with them, and their varying fortunes. It is excellently done and the dialect with which it is sprinkled will endear it to Lancashire readers.