MARRIED HATE

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 166, 9 April 1932, Page 17

MARRIED HATE

“Wedlock,” by Jacob Wassermatiu (Loudon: George Alien and Unw.in). Few books to-day apart from penny arithmetics and shilling geographies are as simply and accurately titled as Herr Wassermami's latest, novel, “Wedlock,” a substantial, depressing story full of the psychology of the un-bappily-inated. Wassermanu, at a ripe age, looks at the existing marriage institution with passionately cynical eyes. Only a step further and they would be moist with despair. But a hope of reform has remained at least long enough for him to cast a revealing lloodligbt on marital unhappiness and the factors which often produce it. And in a single isolated passage he suggests that a certain kind of metamorphosis is urgently needed in the relationship between marriage and society. Wassermanu has shown before that lie is 'an acute observer of the human race: aud in this latest novel bis perceptiveness is shudderingly keen. He has all the resource and success of tlie master-craftsman in ills use of character and story to provoke strong thought' of the type lie wants, shaded and formed according to his private mould. If it is good for a book to make on the mind of the submissive or even repelled reader the precise impress wished for by its writer, Wasseriuann is doubly an artist —first for doing it so consummately, and secondly for doing it in a novel. But “Wedlock,” although a good novel, is not an excellent. one. The strain it imposes is considerable and almost unrelieved. It was right and proper for Wassermann to utter his parable, to tell so much truth, to cast so much light, to show to so many people, probably, indeed, for the first time so clearly, a detailed chart of the dangerous waters of matrimony. But it seems equally wrong and useless of him never to sail out into the open, where lie would discover more peo_ple going their way safely than lie appears to suspect. His view is exaggerated, bis book too monotonously a record of perplexity and psychological distress, developed with characteristic thoroughness. Slip out the characters and the generally slight fragments of action (there is no humour to be thrown on the scrapheap) and slip in chapter headings to the long discourses that occur so frequently. There emerges an encyclopaedic work on marriage woes, tuned to the dismal dual keynote of Sturm mid Drang. The pity is that (lie storj' of “Wedlo.ek” is such a line idea, the characters so mirculously presented, and the workmanship so superb. GRASPING AN IDEAL. “Religion, Morals and the Intellect,” by If. E. Bollard (Loudon: Allen and Unwin). Mr. Pollard gives the essence of his subject in his first chapter, "The Points at Issue.” "Is the intellect a reliable guide to the most significant truth for men? .. . What function—or may we say faculty?—of the human spirit is it which brings us into closest touch with essential truth?” Some people may rciy on the inerrancy of human reason; others may take for granted that intuition, religious instinct or some insight born of imagination may bring them into touch with reality. That is not sufficient for Mr. Pollard. If a philosophy is to be assumed, should not its credentials be examined? To him religion, morality and scientific thinking arc all activities of one spirit, whatever their different parts in life; the supreme qualities of the moral life make one' with the very meaning of religion. His concern with religion goes far beyond mere questioning the truth or falsity of certain items of belief. This book is for the inquiring mind. There- is plenty of hard, and at times complicated, reasoning in it. reasoning that calls for much hard thinking by the reader if it is to be understood at all clearly. It is a book for the few but they should relish this quest toward the understanding grasp of an ideal. A BATCH OF THRILLERS. “Mystery in Kensington Gore,” by Martin Porlock (London: Collins); “The Waxworks Murder,” by John Dixon Carr (London: Hamilton); “The Sign of the Glove,” by Carlton Dawe (London: Ward, Lock); “Chief Inspector McLean,” by George Goodchild (London: Hodder and Stoughton) ; “Devil or Man,” by Peter Bcare (London: Jenkins). Here are five books with thrills enough in any one of them to provide an exciting hour for lhe most blase. Two of them differ from the- usual run of thrillers. “Devil or Man” is a spy story. Captain John Barrington, on leave from France, arrives at a lonely , inn in the centre of a moor. Information of British activities had been reaching Germany, and it is here, that the captain expects to find the leak. Tie finds much more than he had bargained for—sereams in the night, faces and ghostlike figures. Mr. Goodcliild needs no introduction, lii his latest book Chief Inspector McLean is on the spot again. This time his main worry is a secret society whose members are known by the letters of the Greek alphabet. “Digamnia,” head of the gang, is sinister and elusive enough to test even the Chief Inspector's capabilities. “Mystery in Kensington Gore” opens well. A man in dress clothes enters the temporarily deserted kitchen of a large house in search of food, warmth and shelter. He falls asleep, is awakened by a girl and shown into a room where a dead man sits slumped at a desk. Then the thrills begin in earnest. 'Those who remember Mr. Carr's hairraising “It Walks by Night.” will expect much.from his new book. They should not be disappointed. Bcncolin. a French detective, enters a museum of waxworks. There in- the gloom he discovers the body of a girl lying in the arms of a figure of the Satyr of the Seine. This is a mystery that will baffle the most experienced reader. A Governor of Bombay, on route to England, dies suddenly and mysteriously aboard a liner. How Colonel Gantian. known as “Loathormnuth." helns to elucidate the events behind this death, will be.found in Mr. Dawe's new book, “The Sign of the Glove.” “THE PURITAN.” “Much to the indignation of W. B. Yeats, the Irish Free State censorship has added Liam O'Flaherty's ‘The Puritan’ to its. long list of banned books and newspapers. asserting that it is obscene.” remarks the “Manchester Guardian,” in an explanatory note at the head of a correspondent's “revised version" of the “Shan Van Vogh.” The new version is as fololws :■ —• There’s a book upon the say (Says lhe Shan Ban Vogh) Oi must kill without delay (Says the Shan Ban Vogh) : Vis. for all Oi may be green. Sure me heart, is white an’ clean. An’ O’Flaherty's obscene, Says the Shan Ban Vogh! Ay—an’ if Oi close the gales (Says the Shan Ban Vogh) Bhwhat’s it got to do witli Yeats? (Says the Shan Ban Vogh) : For all hough Oi may be poor, Blcssin's bo. Oi’m not. impure. An' O' know phwat's lilhruehoor. Says the Shan Ban Vogh! Shan Van Vogh (“The Poor Old Woman”) is u traditional name for Ireland.