What London Reads:

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 17 (Supplement)

What London Reads:

! LONDON". MR. J. B. PRIESTLEY, novelist and dramatist. Has plenty to say and a wholehearted enjoyi ment in saying it. He does not i have to scratch about for sc<inty morsels of plot and character; he | finds easily broad streams of ' | adventure and turns out book j after book with satisfying ease. | When he writes plays, it is not | one in three years, but three in a j season. For this reason he dissatisfies the precious, who enjoy trickles and are annoyed by broad streams.

By--Charles Pilgrim

• I iie Doomsday Men" (Heinemann) is a high adventure. Jt lias rather surprised Mime of Mr. Priestley's admirers, because it is not confined to the relatively commonplace and plausible field of "the Good Companions" and "Angel Pavement." But those who are inclined to complain forget the strain of grotesque fantasy in "Adam in Moonshine" and "Benighted," which were among Mr. Priestley s earliest books. "Doomsday Men" might have satisfied Robert Louie Stevenson as the author of "The New Arabian Nights." A young Englishman is looking for a beautiful girl whom he has met in a tennis mutch; an IrishAmerican is tracking down the murderer of his brother; and a scientist is in search of another scientist. They all meet in California and become entangled with the plot of the Doomsday Men to destroy the world by electric power. One does not bring rational analysis to bear on this book. One might as well analyse rationally Mr. Masefield's "Odt'ja." There are any number of ridiculously exciting hairbreadth escapes. The hero in the right manner is often trapped almost to hie doom, but things work out all right in the Ion;* run. The world is saved from the Doomsday Men and romance is satisfied. This ie what might be called a thoroughly jolly book in spite of the fact that Mr. Priestley has indulged a native fancy for passing horrors. Although it makes easy reading. a second thought may find "in it a veiled modern allegory with a moral. Gentlefolk 'l ho passim; of the old order with all pathos as well as its inevitability has iK'en a favourite theme of novelists and dramatists. Perhaps the most famous version of all is to be found in Tchekov's "The Cherry Orchard." "Late Summer" (Mucmillan) is really a social chronicle in the form of fiction. Barbara (Ijtdy) Wilson lias given us with great knowledge and in sympathetic detail a picture of that dying society which almost ceased at the beginning of this century. We have the quiet and seemingly indcstructible country house, the haunt for generations of gentlefolk who live their own traditional lives and have no thought of any other kind of worUI. Lady Wilson knows her subject well, as well as Miss Sackville West knew a similar subject in "The Edward-i<in-s." The great house is in a Berkshire village. A French observer looking over the fine facade, the splendid trees and the spreading lawns, sums it all up as "paradise.' In the days of the Boer War, those noble and gentle folk respond without disturbing their leisure to the patriotic appeal. They organise sewing parties and make little convenient economies. They have their cultured , graces and find enjoyment in lectures in the French language given by a Mme. Grandchose. There is a plot; certain of the characters work out their destinies; but neither the plot nor the characters matter in comparison with the general subject. "Late Summer" is nearing autumn; the leaves of the country garden begin to fall; the paradise will lose its magic. The Victorian seclusion is broken up. Here and there it may still linger, but only as a reminder of the old order. Dancing to the Left It is almost impossible to count the number of books which pour out from the Press on the Spanish Civil War. Nearly all of them are frankly partisan. They start with an adoration or a hatred of Franco and his party. Their bias makes them monotonous. But "Dancer in Madrid" (Harrap), by Janet Riesent'eld, is something rather different. Miss Riesenfcld is the daughter of a distinguished Austrian musician who has made ' liis home in America.. She was trained is a dancer and made an unfortunate \irly marriage, which was dissolved. From America she set out to find in Spain a young man for whom she entertained an affection, but arrived at the frontier at the very moment of the Franco rising. She was stopped, but entered in the guise of a. newspaper correspondent. In Madrid she met her Spanish lover, but soon they drifted ipart. He was for Franco; events drew her towards the Government. Her lover was shot as a spy and she. after dancing in the shell-shattered city, made her tray back home. She gives a graphic ind unimpassioned picture of Spain in wartime. . ♦ ♦ '+ + From the Publishers FICTION I Quest of Life—By Welle X. Seanlan dialed. rhe House of Templemor*, by Pat Lawlor (Heed?, Wellington). Spanish Maine, by P. C,. Wren; Shining Windows, by Kathleen morris (Murray •. Irown Man's Burden, by Roderick Flnlay--son (Unicorn Tress). .Isa Vale, !>y Olive Hifrprlns Prouty: Mr. Zero, by Patricia Went worth: Young Man Without. Money, by Maysle Greig(Hodfler and Stoiignton7. Ipanish Recruit, by Lucien Maulvault (Duckworth). NON FICTION. .etters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. f|., by Emily Anderson (Macmlllan). tustralian Parrots, by Neville W. Cayley (Anarus and Robertson). ►ancer in lad?id, by Janet Riesenfeld; Americans All, by William Seabrook (Harrap). ailors' Rebel'ion: A Century of Naval Mutinies, by J. G. Bullocke (Eyre and Spottiswoode). 'he Human Situation, by W. MacNelle Dixon; Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill (Anprus and Robertson). quire Speaks: A Play for Radio, by R. A. K. Mason (iJaxton Press). Jd