“HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY” AND OTHER NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23053, 22 June 1940, Page 14

“HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY” AND OTHER NOVELS

TRAVEN The Bridge in the Jungle. By B. Traven, Jonathan Cape. 367 PP* (8/3 net.) Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.Not many New Zealand readers will know Mr Traven’s name. Yet this American novelist has been translated into numerous foreign languages and reached an extraordinary reputation. “The DeathShip” has been published in 17 languages; “The Treasury of the Sierra Madre,” in 12; “The _ Carretta,” a recent work, already in 11. And now here is “The Bridge in the Jungle,” a novel in which most readers will feel themselves drawn under the spell of a genius whose power is both realistic and mysterious. The matter of the story is simple: a little Mexican Indian boy disappears, one night, while the villagers are dancing; he has fallen off a bridge and been drowned; soon this is known, but the body is not recovered until a piece of native magic is tried and succeeds. Meanwhile, the life of the village is unfolded; the boy’s mother becomes a figure of piercingly communicated distress; the character of the Mexican Indian is illuminated by direct observation and by subtle contrast with the white visitors; and, finally, the funeral of the boy is the subject of. one of Mr Traven’s amazingly vivid passages of sensuous description. What is so telling in this nar* rative? First and last, Mr Traven’s close, imaginative apprehension of the emotional and material life of a primitive people; secondarily, his implied criticism, thereby, of what is false and cold in supposedly higher civilisation; and, perhaps, the curious blend of an intellectualist’s scepticism with a poet’s respect for mysterv. EAST RIDING They Left the Land. By Naomi Jacob. Hutchinson. 392 pp. (10/6) Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Miss Jacob is a first-rate hand ata story, and she excels herself in this chronicle of four generations of a landed family, the Langdons of

NAOMI JACOB Calderholm in the East Riding of Yorkshire. One of them prospered exceedingly on his acres, flew high in looking for a bride, and caught a fool and a snob. His error was punished in his children, who were hers

WELSH RHAPSODY How Green Was My Valley. By Richard Llewellyn. Michael Joseph. 651 pp. (11/6) Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Mr Llewellyn’s novel has had a huge success in England and the United States. Perhaps the chief reason for it is the eloquent, rhapsodical, almost- bardic style to which Mr Llbwellyn rises again and again, He has tapped the poetry of the Welsh race, as Synge tapped the poetry of Irish peasant speech, and the sound of it has a strange magic. But it suits the substance of Mr Llewellyn’s narrative, of course, or it would soon sound false. The story is put in the mouth of Huw Mprgan, who looks back in old age upon his childhood and youth in sweet rural Wales, upon first love, strong friendships, strong family bonds, stronger than griefs and pain, and then upon the invasion and corruption of his “green valley” by iron, heartless industrialism, by discontent, depression, and the ferment of demagogy, Huw Morgan’s story is a lament for things loved and lost, a rhapsody over memories held arid living. BIGHT IN THE END I Can Take Care of Myself. By Rosemary Rees. Chapman and Hall. 253 pp. (7s 6d net). An English girl of 19 comes alone from England to New Zealand to take a position as gotfSrness with a North Island farpily; but because of an unfortunate shipboard romance her plans fail. She suffers slights and hardships before she finds „a haven and a happy beginning with the man she loves.

more than his. The eldest married because he must make an honest woman of a yeoman’s daughter, and proceeded to make an urban wastrel of himself. But Bess, his wife, was an honest woman in her own right and breed: courageous, humorous, strenuous, loyal, blunt, and shrewd, the finest root and fiower of Yorkr shire earth. Hers is the character that stands out in the story and leads it. It is enough to quote her last word, when her son Robert justifies himself and her in him, turning back to the Yorkshire land: “Aye, Ah’ll be glad enoof ter see t’ moors , agean.”

SECRET SERYICE Drink to Yesterday. By Manning Coles. Hodder and Stoughton. 319 pp. From W. S. Smart. At the inquest on Michael Kingston, village garage proprietor, the coroner discouraged a prying juryman, the police superintendent evaded him. The reader soon learns why: Kingston had been a British intelligence officer, operating inside Germany in the Great War, and . . . the pursuit, at long last, had caught up with him. As he sat facing his enemy, desperately trying to think of a trick, a plan, the least wisp of a chance - to outwit him and live, Kingston’s mind ran back over his long partnership with Hambledon (“Onkel Heinrich”!), to Reck the schoolmaster and his secret transmitting set near Cologne, to his duel with von Bodenheim, to the destruction of the new Zeppelins in their shed, to poor Marie Bluehm, whom he had loved, genuinely. It was her brother who sat opposite him, with the automatic in his hand, waiting and watching, not to be tricked. These memories are Mr Coles’s story, a thrilling one, plausible, and not without pages more thoughtful and subtly moving than most such tales. A WOMAN’S LIFE Portrait of Angela. By Elizabeth Cambridge. Jonathan Cape, 318 pp. 7s 6d net.) Through Simpson and Williams Ltd. This study in character concerns mainly Angela Dufresne and David Knight, her cousin’s son. Angela, early in this century, leaves for the Saintes Maries islands in the British West Indies to look after the children of her cousin, married to a planter there. Against her cousin’s will, she marries Paul Dufresne, a Frenchman who lives in a feudal way on a large estate. Upon Paul’s death in the Great War, Angela is left, with a baby daughter, to manage the estate. She tackles her new problems with native resolution and courage, overcomes the early hostility of Paul’s relations, and gives them her competent protection. The portrait of Angela alone is a sincere study of a pioneering British woman. The complications in her life come mainly from David, a strange, restless, honest character, an artist by inclination and capacity, a communist by conviction. David’s is a tragic career, but it does not impipge on the placid island life till he returns and is accidentally shot in a native rising. Angela’s tale, told autobiographically, is an attempt to justify David and give an insight into his strange and wilful character. This colourful and interesting novel is a stronger piece of work than any Miss Cambridge has previously written. THE BOND The Sound of Winter. By F. L. Green. -Michael Joseph. 319 pp. (8/9) Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Mr Green’s story, though it has much of the fierce sensationalism of “On the Night of the Fire,” runs a more baffling course, because it is not very easy to understand the relationship from which its driving force is drawn. Essentially, it is that of two men’s close companionship in which there is, nevertheless, a fundamental and increasing element of antagonism. Bromback, crude and stupid, plans a robbery. Halge, cleverer but timid, backs out at tlfe last minute; and in the result Brom-

back is caught, convicted for a killing, and sentenced to a long prison term. But the bond between Bromback and him is not broken. Through Halge’s rise to wealth and position, it still holds, tying him to a hated and feared past and a hated and feared influence. Halge is freed only when Brornback dies in prison and he himself—this is sketchily occult—on the same day narrowly escapes death. FARNOL A Matter of Business and Other Stories. By Jeffery Farnol. Sampson Low. Mars ton and Co. Ltd. 320 pp. (8/-) , Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Mr Farnol’s legion of. faithful readers will welcome this collection of 30 stories. Some belong in period, plot type, and choice of character to the tradition Mr Farnol has established for himself m historical romance. In others, in useful contrast, he turns to later days and ways. He adorns, or embellishes, past and present with equal skill. V