NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21330, 24 November 1934, Page 15

NEW NOVELS

♦ FURIOUS ROMANS Caesar is Dead. By Jack Lindsay. Ivor Nicholson and Watson. 366 pp. (8/6 net.) The most striking development in fiction since 1930 has been the revival of the historical novel, and the period most studied has been the hundred years before and after the birth of Christ. There have been novels of Carthage and of Grecian decadence, and most of the Roman Emperors have been studied. Nearly all these novels have been stories of violence; murder, lust, hatred, and furious love have been represented in normal and abnormal forms. Ugly, sensational scenes that would be shocking in a novel of modern manners have the condonation of being actually or justifiably historical. In very few of these stories has the interest been that of a chain of events or the development of a ruling character. Even where the novel has been one of a trilogy or series, each has been too independently sensational to be regarded as a picture of the times or as a biography. The latest example, "Caesar is Dead," continues the story of "Rome for Sale"; it covers a period of less than two years, from March 14, 44 8.C., to the destruction of Cicero. Its events are historical; but there is such a whirl of seductions, rapes, and sexual frenzy that men and incidents are obscured by a murky cloud of lust which darkens friendships and enmities, kinship and political relations. Apart from this pervading preoccupation, Mr Lindsay has allowed himself too much freedom in examining domestic and personal relationships. Great movements and great actions are, by his episodic, jumping method, hard to detect and relate in sequence. However, there is an impression conveyed of the passion of the 75 conspirators, and of the importance to the world of Caesar. The society of Rome, the Empire, religion, East and West, were bound together by the power of his personality, and his loss left "mankind bewildered and ready for anarchy. The violent portraits of Cleopatra and Antony and Fulvia arc difficult to reconcile with common humanity. Some of the minor characters are more plausible. Cicero and Dolabella are admirably represented, and, from the point of view of interest, the writer is most successful with the sub-plot which concerns the poet Gallus. But there are too many sub-plots. Mr Lindsay's chief ability is the power to describe a massed movement: the demonstration round Caesar's funeral pyre or the conspirators' march through the streets of Rome. Even these are overlaid with too much detail, for Mr Lindsay is not content with doing things well. He must elaborate. He attempts also more than once the task that has eluded many a writer, to describe the thoughts and feelings of a dying man. Perhaps the spectacular film has encouraged writers to be grandiose and ornate, and to impress by sheer bulk and numbers. Mr Lindsay knows and understands his Romans, but he directs them unnaturally to achieve the most startling effects of physical violence and stupendous emotions. DEFEATED Cow-ferry Isle. By Edward Ferey. Ivor Nicholson and Watson, Ltd. 456 pp. (8/6 net.)Mr Percy's second novel is a most impressive and substantial piece of work. Its resemblance to some of Hardy's, in subject and spirit and manner, is unmistakable, but suggests nothing at all like a copyist's narrow achievement: rather, a true kinship of gifts and outlook, and perhaps the confirming of a young artist in his way by the example of an older and greater. Broadly Mr Percy's theme is the increasing power and isolation of a strong, ambitious man, who succumbs at last, defiant still and not understanding, to the hostility with which his success and his ruthlessness have surrounded him. Mark Amphlett, the "Lord of Urrytage," has in him a good deal of Henchard, the Mayor of Casterbridge, in character*a# in destiny; but parallelism goes much further. Amphlett casts off his poor, simple wife; and it is in Hardy's vein of pathos that she and the odd, faithful lover of her youth come to nurse him in his illness. Like Hardy's, again, are the irony and pathos of Amphlett's end. He drowns, trying to save his red setter, the last and only creature to love him wholly and without fear; and when the bodies are found . . .

"No. Mark Amphlett 'ud never kill 'imself." broke in the third hoarsely. "'E loved himself too well. He must ha' got on the ice some'ow and gone in. and the dog went in arter ; im—if you ask me." "Ah. that's more it." "Well, if (hat's so—'twas a miserable waste o' the dog."

It is a Hardy's ironical turn of events that pours Mark's money into the lap of Elsbeth, whom he had disinherited, and, when she marries Jacob Strawn, enriches a victim and an unrelenting enemy. Elsbeth, who is shallow and selfish, neither suffers nor loses but is fortune's child; her sister Lilian, strong, proud, and generous, awaits in vain even a letter from the lover who was to return soon. Mr Percy is like Hardy even in writing, occasionally, with a peculiar, indifferent awkwardness and then, in a sentence or two of dialogue or a comment or a descriptive phrase, achieving the sort of perfection that seems unrealisable until the thing is done. And, finally, this book, whose setting is the Romney Marshes, is rich in the folk humours and country tales which furnish the happiest pages of Hardy. Its force and beauty are quite out of the ordinary; and it will be strange if Mr Percy has not made himself the subject of speculations and hopes almost embarrassing.

UNHOLY TERROR Rude Earth. By Reardcn Conner. ,T M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 304 pp.

The hero of Mr Conner's second novel is a brute called Martin Delany, drunken, lecherous, treacherous, murderous. This gallant, having murdered the innocent and pretty Stasia Mehaffy's father to get over his opposition, wins her hand at his victim's wake; and she enters upon a frightful married life with Martin's sister and mother as companions, the first a Dublin prostitute, the second a foul old hag. Events run rapidly to tragedy as Stasia and Father Paul, a young man who has unwillingly entered the priesthood, find themselves in love and Martin learns of the fact. Mr Conner writes with a force that too often rises to frenzy; and he will write better and more convincingly when he grows cooler.

YOUNG LOVE Angel Making Music. By Ferenc Molnar. Ivor Nicholson and Watson, Ltd. 279 pp. Ferenc Molnar's name will be known to some Christchurch, readers as that of the author of the brilliant play, "The Guardsman," filmed by Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. His fame has been late in reaching the English-speaking world. None of his plays, though well known in Europe, was translated and performed in-London or New York till after the Great War; and this is the first of his novels to be prin*«d in England. It is a book in which wisdom wears every grace, and if it penetrates to an ugly truth does so with cool gentleness'. The story is that of a young man, beloved but not in love, who with slightly weary, passive grace continues an affair with a former employer's daughter; but when Aurel meets and loves the girl Judith, | Irma's jealousy creates a situation strained, painful and ugly. Molnar' has an admirable sense of justice, as well as a level, tolerant outlook upon youth and young love. He engages all sympathy for Judith, a notably well drawn character; but not even when poor Irma is behaving most unpleasantly and unscrupulously will he throw her to the wolves of dislike and disgust. The translation of this brilliant but not superficial book from the Hungarian seems to have been very well done. WRECK Outward Bound from Liverpool. By Edouard Peisson. Translated from the French by C. R. Benstead. Methuen and Co. Ltd. 248 pp. M. Peisson, whose translator has made him read admirably well in English, tells the story of a great disaster at sea. He is at his best, no doubt, in his glimpses of the material facts of tragedy, as when, after the grazing of the iceberg, the officers see the plates starting: "Water!" Grayson looked then b,imself and saw. It was streaming silently down the side in scarcely visible rivulets, each as fat as a man's linger. It. was forcing its way between the plates as it' the plates themselves had started working, and if that turned out to be s.j . . . They spun round. Until 11 icy reached the portsirio plating they could not see that there, too, I lie water was streaming in. Simon put a ringer on one of the plates. The thing was alive. He felt its life in his hand. Without moving, it was yet straining to move. It was working. Soon those rivets would sheer .... But these passages gain from the economical care with which the reader is assisted tp follow the progress to disaster through the minds of the ship's officers—Davis, the captain, who knows he is expected to make a record Atlantic run on this, the first voyage of the Star of the Seas; the cool, ironical first officer, Herwick, who distrusts the ship, built with too much regard for speed and too little for safety; and others. Davis carries on at high speed into fog, and the touch of a berg on the long hull is enough. There is real dramatic power in the book. KAY TAKES CHARGE Somebody Must. By Alice Grant Rosman. Hodder and Stoughton. 320 pp. From W. S. Smart. This is a very competent, smoothly written, and witty story about a family called Flete, who, when Mrs Flete went off to enjoy herself in Scotland, fell under the care of a daughter, Kay. She, at the end of her Oxford career, had quite other thoughts than of running a household. But out of the duty she took over came much good: a closer approach to her father, for instance, whom she had misunderstood and been helped by her mother to misunderstand. In the end, Mrs Flete returned to a domestic province in which she could never again hold the same selfish power. But this outline of the book omits most of its variety of character and gives no hint of the brisk play of its talk. "SAPPER'S" SHORT STORIES Fifty-one Stories of Thrill and Adventure. By "Sapper." Hodder and Stoughton. 1018 pp. From W. S. Smart. Admirers of "Sapper's" thrillers have plenty to keep them pleasantly engaged in this "one-man omnibus." "Sapper's" ability to - tell a story seems to lie chiefly in the art of sustained suspense. He is not careful about grammatical construction, nor does he disdain the shop-worn phrase; but he knows how to work up excitement to the unexpected climax and to hold interest to the very end of a story. A good book for an idle hour. FRUSTRATION Forty-six. By Stewart Howard. The Endeavour Press. 252 pp. A bank manager, who, thanks to a small legacy, has been able to retire early, finds life at 46 aimless and unsatisfying. He has tried two matrimonial experiments, both unsuccessful, and has rather sordid affairs with other women. In youth he had shown promise as a writer; but domestic circumstances had compelled him to abandon an artistic career. The book describes the crystallisation of a rather selfish man's decision to escape from a life that has grown distasteful. It is well written. BARONESS ORCZY AGAIN A Spy of Napoleon. By Baroness Orczy. Hodder and Stoughton. 321 pp. From W. S. Smart. Here is another of Baroness Orczy's romantic stories with a background of history. The stage is set in France just before the FrancoGerman war of 1870. A woman spy, beautiful of course, a young French nobleman who marries her in mysterious circumstances, intfigues, plots, hairbreadth escapes, and all the usual ingredients are present to make a fascinating story after the authoress's best manner.