SOME RECENT FICTION

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3036, 24 March 1917, Page 13

SOME RECENT FICTION

"Golden -Youth." j: If "Golden Youth," by Gertie De S. Wentworth-James. (T. Werner Laurie), is intended to convey any moral, it is that elderly ladies should beware- of "beauty specialists." Tho heroine, .Mrs. Eleanor Pike, has.reached middle |-ago—and a little getting much enjoyment out of life. Her husband, au uneducated, vulgar "city man," poses as a model of .all the Christian virtues, making great outward, profession of religion. Alas, he is an arrant hypocrite, who run's "massage" establishments in Manchester and Glasgow, / and is engaged also in the villainous Whito Slave traffic. Mrs. Pike suddenly inherits a large fortune, and, tired to death of her husband, thinks of divorce. A "lady-dctectivo" collects conclusive evidenco-of the husband's evil doings, and the wife soon obtains her freedom. How she seeks tho. aid of a "beauty specialist" to repair the ravages of time, how, as, ;spemingly, a young and handsome woman, she. is made lovo to by a handjsbme young actor whom tho ' "beauty .specialist" had marked down for her ■own; .how, at a minute's notice, the "treatment" comes to an end, and tho -unhappy woman-loses both good looks and heivlover—all this and much more is told in groat detail. The principal characters in tho story are most unpleasant people, and, as js generally the case with this author's stories, there is an all-pervading air of the unwholesome. The Children at Kangaroo Creek. "The Children at Kangaroo Creek," by Frances Fitzgerald (Loudon,-"Brit-ish Australasian" office), is a pleasantly told story of the experiences, on a bush farm, o fthe four little Hamilton orphans who live with their uncle in a Melbourne suburb. The uncle has to go to Japan on business, and the children are sent off, to their other guardian, their mother's cousin, Mr. Roliit, together with their governess. Mr. Roliit is an amiable, absent-minded naturalist, who cares for little besides butterflies and beetles, and his wife is a tart-tongued, bad-tempered woman who, childless herself, has no sympathy with-Children. The Hamilton children, having been, accustomed to run a little wi\d on.their good-natured', uncle's placo, find "Cousin Martha's" ideas as to discipline rather trying. However, their 'natural sprightlines's of spirit is unquenchable, and tho story of their experiences and escapades at Kangaroo Creek will make good reading for Other young people. Conquering Hal. Vera G. Dwyer's story, "Conquering Hal" (Ward, Lock, and Co.; per Whitcombe and Tombs) has for its hero a happy-go-lucky young Australian of English-parentage, who is'engaged in sheep-farming when the war breaks out. His parents, who are of aristocratic descent,'are living in Sydney, i

poor, but possessed of no small family pride. Tho story is much more concerned with tho small woes and joys of the hero's sister, Uachol, than with Hal nimseif. Bliss Dwyer gives her readers some pleasantly humorous sketches of social life in a Sydney suburb, and her story, in which tho war comes in at the ond, with the hero sailing for Egypt and the front, is readable enough in its way. '.