NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22195, 11 September 1937, Page 18

NEW NOVELS

ANDREW MANSON, M.D. The Citadel. By A. J. Cronin. Victor Gollancz Ltd. 446 pp. (8/6 net.) The fortunes of a young doctor a Scot, who has to fight not only his chosen enemy, disease, but greed, ignorance, and prejudice among laymen, greed, ignorance, and prejudice again in his own profession, the immobility, disorganisation, and jealousies of officially organised research, and finally the greed and blindness of his own ambition—sucn is the theme of A. J. Cronin s new story. It is a good one, sure to be read eagerly. The ups-and-downs of dramatic change are exciting An almost painful interest is created by the medical hero's lapse away from his own principles and aims into the selfishness of a mere careerist; and the crisis which arrests his decline and saves the man, though it imperils his professional status ana future, is described with Dr. Cronin's remarkable command over thrills of apprehension and of relief The death of Andrew Manson s wife, at the moment of their reconciliation and return to full sympathy and understanding, sinks the disastrous scale against him perhaps, unnecessarily far; but trie pathetic opportunity is not abused. Manson's first two appointments are in Welsh mining villages. The first he resigns in protest against outrageous personal treatment; the second he resigns in protest against trie outrageous charges provoked by his researches into the causation of lung j disease among the anthracite miners. His third, an appointment as Medical Officer of the Mines Fatigue Board, he resigned because official methods and individual crankiness prevented him from pursuing the. very work which had won him the post: and his next fight was the hard one to build up the decayed practice he bought in Paddington. increasing success, the origin oi which in chance as well as in merit he was not humble enough to admit, reared in himself the enemy that was nearly to destroy him, as he forsook science and honesty for the shams upon which wealthy colleagues were prospering. The narrative is fluent and direct. The dialogue is vigorous, but not very sensitively flexible. It is possible to feel sharp twinges of doubt, as Dr. Cronin presses briskly on, about some passages in the journey. For example, the direction of Manson's research seems anachronistic; his achievement, in the leisure of something less than a year, in getting up his French, his Latin, and his professional subjects for the M.R.C.P. diploma seems incredible. Christine's continuing to act as his dispenser when his Paddington practice had hugely grown and he already had consulting rooms in the West End is puzzlingly unnecessary; and Dr. Cronin's emphasis on the semi-fraudulent but lucrative methods of some types of medical men may be felt as that of a rather coarse and heavy thumb. Such twinges will not assail many readers and will spoil the pleasure of still fewer. • MURDER WITHOUT MYSTERY A Murder in Sydney. By I*«»rd Mann. Jonathan Cape. 303 pp. (65.) From Angus and Robertson ltd. If it is the business of book societies to pick winners, the choice of "A Murder in Sydney" by the London Book Society is easy to understand. It is cut out for popular success. It tells the story of a murder; it wraps the reader's sympathies round the murderer; it licenses this indulgence by bringing the guilty one, on her own and selfsacrificiai confession, to ordinary justice; and it happily softens that with a seven-year sentence, instead i of death, and the prospect of a devoted lover's comfort and support when, as the Poet Laureate says, "the long trick's over." The heroine detects her father's secret < relief ■when his invalid wife dies, hates him for it, hates and slays the woman to whom he turns, and hopes to see him hanged for the murder, in punishment for his faithlessness; but her nerve, or her conscience, fails lier, she confesses, she is tried, and she escapes on a manslaughter verdict and sentence of seven vears. What quietened her was her new thought for him. "What about you. Mat?' "It'll be all right: I can wait Ten or 20 years, Kid. Don't keep thinking about it. It'll pass for both of us." She was silent a few moments before she raised her head and spoke quietly, "I'll stick it. I'm going to pay for it. I reckon it's fair enough/ Fair to my father, fair to my mother, and fair enough to Chloe. Mat, poor Chjoe, but' there'd be no use killing me for her or putting me in here for life'.'* " . Wo, dear." God knows. Mat?" "Perhaps he does, kid" And perhaps the London Book Society knows,, too. THE BRONTES Divide the Desolation. By Kathryn Jean MacFarlane. George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd. 410 pp. (8s - 6d net.) From a letter of the author's to her publishers: . Two years ago I re-read every book I could And on the Bronte's. (1 had since childhood read about them.) Emily began to loom in my mind: so; little was known of her, and she was so* vitally interesting. I began the actual writing in March. 1935, and finished it in January, 1936. As I wrote I also began to underhand why no novel of the Brontes *tad been written before. For'though I wop thoroughly familiar with Bronte hiirtory and legend, though I felt I knew my characters almost as well as 1 knew myself, though I had my plot worked out to my own satisfaction, I grew more and more humble as I worked with my material. I was terribly afraid that I would "over-" or "under-"write it; I doubted that I was capable of doing the Brontes justice. I wrote my novel three times, and at the fourth copying forced myself to consider it "finished." All the time that I was trying to make a novel I was also employed at the University' of Hawaii as a library assistant. Mrs MacFarlane rightly, places Emily Bronte in the central dramatic position. She shows us Emily hearing at Law Hill School the tale which was the material for "Wuthering Heights," beginning its fictionary development with Branwell, and continuing it—as the best evidence warrants—alone, or with little help from her erratic brother. The Bronte family scenes are really well done; and the figuration of Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell, through Er»ily's eyes, is faithful and fine. The celebrated episodes are all here: the diverse geniuses scribbling in the parsonage, Branwell flashing and falling, Charlotte and Heger, all the re«t of it. And Miss MacFarlane 4o.es everything but make us see fMUus plain.

CROMWELLIAN PERIOD Sue Vemey. By Jack Undsay. Ivor Nicholson and Watson Ltd. 416 pp. Although some of the turns of event in Mr Lindsay's story are conditioned by the history of the English Revolution and by the social cast of the times, it is not essentially an historical novel. It is, rather, a personal story with a strongly marked period- background. The first section of the book gives a lively account of tfie great Royalist household at Hillesden, from which Sue with the rest of the company, family and garrison Was driven by Parliament troops. In London she found her brave, romantic Hopes, of love shrunkenly fulfilled in; the courtship of one Richard Alport. They were scarcely married when he was imprisoned for debt. The victim of distracted times, easy-go-ing Alport became in prison the victim of his own weakness. After two years of Sue's effort rather than his own he was released: ' "v He stood in the space ; jojtj&reedpm like an old moulted mangy 1 *>irdT belatedly let out of a cage, blinking. There was a film of stupefaction over his eyes. He had had a bath and his linen was clean, but the dirt of. the Fleet was ingrained. She struggled gallantly to retrieve him and his Cheshire estate. Her loyalty to him did not waver, though her Royalism and her hatred of Cromwell were strangely disturbed as her interests changed; but Alport's decline was more than she could overtake. The end discloses him in muddled sentimental grief over Sue's death, yet warming himself over his wine to the thought of marrying again. TWENTY TALES BY "Q" Q's Mystery Stories. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 402 pp. These stories will not be unknown to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's readers, since most of them come from other books of his—from "Mortal - lone," "News from the Duchy," "Wandering Heath," "The Laird's Luck," "Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts," "I Saw Three Ships," "Noughts and Crosses," "Merry Garden," and "The White Wolf." But how many, even of those who have always rated his romances and humours above the general and apart, possess all these books and can, when they wish, refresh their memory of "Captain Knot," or "The Room of Mirrors," or "The Two Householders"? The 15 old tales and five hitherto unpublished make a delightful collection, bound by their similarity in touching the inexplicable, the horrifying, and the unearthly side of life but all admirably distinct. They are stories by a writer who knows the "pull" of pure story and who knows how to use words for delight