"Madam Lucien"

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 201, 26 August 1939, Page 10

"Madam Lucien"

AS older peopte will remember, international affairs were in a disordered state in the years immediately preceding the World War. Prussianism and Pan-Ger-manism were becoming more and more the ideal goal of the German people. Poincare in France was dreaming of t lie reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine, politics were at sixes and sevens, and scandals involving prominent people were constantly coining to light, intensifying the fury and disgust of the nation. Then came swiftly, one after the other, the shooting of the editor of "Figaro"' by Madame C'aillaux, the murder of .James, the Socialist leader, and the kindling at Serajevo of tlie flame that set Europe in a blaze and brought America out of her neutrality. It is the Paris of these days, more particularly its high life, that Arthur Hodges takes as the setting of his latest novel, "Madame

Lucien" (Thornton Butterworth). Madame Lucien is a fine character. A distinguished member of French society, she is in her early thirties, is beautiful, wealthy and essentially Parisian, and is living apart from her husband, who ■is a gambler and a profligate. Into her life comes a high-bred, and highprincipled ex-captain in the British Army, who is in Paris in connection with the establishment of a business. They fall in love with each other, and : the novel is, in part, the story of their romance. And an absorbing story it is. • But it is more. It is the thread which Mr. Hodges utilises to give us vivid ; pictures of the people of wealth and of note in the French capital, and the , social life they live. As we accompany ! them to salons, cafes, the theatre, and ■ the opera house, we see a good deal of aimlessness. But we also see how well > bred they were, how well educated, how ! intelligent and refined, and how charm- " ing were the women folk. Mr. Hodges s is an acute observer of men and , women, he knows his Taris, and he - knows how to make it and the people 5 he portrays real to us.