What London Is Reading

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 23, 28 January 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

What London Is Reading

LONTK)N. IT would be interesting to make a shelf of the best-selling novels of the past and present generation. A careful examination of them might or might not give ns a safe guide to what the public really want and render not a little assistance to unsuccessful novelists in distress. Prominent on this shelf would bo "If Winter Comes." by Mr. A. S. M. Hutchinson. One would note that although Mr. Hutchinson ha* had hi* other successes he has not been able to produce another best-seller. Hi* new novel "As Once You Were"' (Nicholson and Watson) is of the same school as "If Winter Comes." Piers Exeeat is a hero of a type to which the great heart of the public instinctively goes out. A widower of fifty-five he retires into the country full of good intentions and high spirits with the object of recapturing his youth. Thanks to his good will and exuberant spirit he is able to enter into the happiest relations with a small group of rather undesirable persons. He is determined to impart to them the happiness which he can discover in life, the happiness of a second boyhood. H« takes a dirty chainnender into his home; he acts a* fairy godfather to an unsuccessful and discontented young novelist, and he falls in love with a charming girl of twenty-two. But he discovers that 22 is not for 55. Therefore, being the kind of man he is. he enriches the young novelist, bo that there may be a happy union of youth. It. is fairyland full of that charm which enabled Mr. Hutchinson to become a best-seller. The question is. can a novelist who has been working for so many years recapture the high spirits and sunny attractiveness of a younger man? One feels that the problem of Piers Exceat is the problem of his author. How will the public deal with it? An Egyptian Princess Writers are still digging into the distant past to find material for books which are so near to fiction that they cannot be called history, and so near to fact that it is difficult to class them with nevels. Such a book is "The Lost Queen of Egypt" (Seeker and Warburg). The author, Miss Lucille Morrison, has given us a charming story of the ancient court of Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti. These two have become almost popular figures, thanks to the frequent reproduction of their portraits. Clearly, Miss Morrison has a wide and intimate knowledge of life in the Egyptian court and its surroundings. She draws something like an idyllic picture of peace and beauty with a distant enemy hammering at Egypt's confines. When Akhenaten dies he is succeeded by Tutankhaten, known to us more familiarv as Tutankhamen. It is the Princess Ankhsenpaaten. the wife of the new young King, who is the heroine of the story. The young King dies and the young widow flees from her

By--Charles Pilgrim

enemies with Kenofer, a romantic and idealistic young artist who has always loved her. This is a work full of delight for readers who are not frightened at the idea of an ancient, highly developed and lieautiful civilisation. One. feels that one is living in a golden age, but with an overshadowing consciousness that the sunshine and the flowers are fleeting, only to be wiped out by the flood of war. The pages are made more delightful by a large number of decorations by Franz Geritz. Soil or Machine Mr. Alec Brown has written a story of peasant life in Yugoslavia in "Margareta" (Boris, wood). Margareta is a true daughter of the soil. Her father and all her ancestors represented the peasant proprietors undiluted and undeveloped. When she. marries Andreya, she finds that he is not of her generation nor truly of her stock. His mind goes towards machinery and away from the simple farming of their tradition. After six years the husband, sick of the soil, goes to America and becomes wealthy, thanks to his experiments in harvesting machinery. With his new wealth he returns to the Slavonian village and his people. Margareta still loves him but she does not love his new ways and his machinery. She is rooted in the land and land means more to her than even married life. In the divergence of ideals one finds something of a microcosm of the world's life to-day. Mr. Brown writes with sympathy with the peasants. He knows their traditions and habits, he can give us vivid pictures of their customs and rural ceremonies. "Margareta" i« a romance of unusual interest made all the more interesting by its unusual setting. The Gentle Jesus A week or so ngo there was reviewed in this column Sir Hall Caine's monumental "Life of Christ" in which a romantic novelist built up a romantic Figure. Now we have a very different and much smaller work in "A Life of Jesus Christ Our Lord" (Sheed and Ward), by Vincent McNabb. Father McNabb, too, has built up a Divine Figure in accordance with his own personal interpretation, and the essence may be summed up as loving humility. The Jesus of this book enters intimately and with human reaction into the lives of those He meets. Father McNabb is intent on showing the psychological inevitability of all the Gospel events. Things happened as they should have happened and must have happened with such an influence working in their midst. Father McNabb seems to find it all very simple, and be has little use for the pains and difficulties of mere scholarship.