NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21744, 28 March 1936, Page 17

NEW NOVELS

RUSSIAN SCENE So Brief the Tears. By Natalie B. Sokolofl. Chapman and Hall, L td. 475 pp. (7/6 net) This is the story of a woman’s tragedy in post-revolution Russia. It is a grim tale of a grim period not yet over. The Russian scene is presented in stark and brutal outline till it transcends in interest even the tragic story of Zinaida Nikolavna, a beautiful girl of gentle birth who is caught up in the maelstrom of bitter circurpstance and forced to sell herself to save the life of her starving mother. The diverse sides of the girl’s character, the streak of coarseness in it that humanises its unselfish idealism and accounts for her dogged ability to endure, are drawn powerfully and skilfully; and the other characterisations are no less cleverly done. Four or five stand out: Ismailov, a brutal Ogpu leader; The Hawk, a Cossack barbarian, brave, reckless, and unscrupulous; Zahasoff, a scheming Jew spy, sometimes generous and even noble; Zinaida’s brother, Maria Nikolavna, in a hard world but knowing nothing of it; and Nannie, Zinaida’s old peasant nurse, tough and enduring ever to serve her beloved mistresses. The story starts in Moscow, but moves swiftly across a wild landscape, settling for a time in territory occupied by the White Russians before their defeat, swinging to a Cossack village and then across a wide stretch of country to the Polish border. A remarkably well conceived and vividly written novel.