BOOKS of the WEEK

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 48, 19 November 1932, Page 17

BOOKS of the WEEK

SOME NOTEWORTHY NOVELS

Works of Fiction That Deserve to be Read

“Invitation to the Waltz,” by Rosamund Lehmann (London: Chatto and Windus); “Lover’s Leap, by Martin Armstrong (London: Gollancz) ; “The Golden Bee, by Patrick Chalmers (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode); “I Have Been Young,” by Elizabeth Lomond (London: Gollancz).

Miss Lehmann is not a prolific novelist. She writes as one who will take her time with a book and fashion it slowly to her exquisite taste. "Dusty Answer” was an unusually successful first novel, but Miss Lehmann did not therefore rush into print with another to ride at all costs the tide of her popularity. It was three years before her second novel, “A Note in Music,” appeared, and now there has been a gap of nearly three to her third. Yet, however much one may want to know more of this author’s work, one can be patient with this slow burgeoning and blossoming when the full flower shows its face. A book like "Invitation to the V.'altz” is worth waiting two or three years for. The action takes place in two days with an interval of a week between them. The effect is all in the telling, for the plot itself is very slight. It is merely the recital of two short but Important periods in a girl’s life, the first her seventeenth birthday, the second the day of a long-looked-forward-to ball. Into this book Miss Lehmann has packed a host of minor characters, among whom the heroine, Olivia, moves uncertainly, her feelings varying from fear to hope, from joy to young despair. Mr. Armstrong is concerned withithe emotions of more mature people. His book is a love story told in turn by the three principal characters. He begins by recording it In diary form, but soon abandons the strict soliloquy for a freer, more convenient expression of his ideas. The result is all one has learned to expect from so fine a novelist. It Is a splendid psychological study of a man’s relationship with two women, written with keen insight and a full sense of the value of every effect It creates.

It is at first a little strange to find Mr. Patrick Chalmers’s Irish idiom used in a tale of business in the City of London. But actually, although the book takes its title from the sign, a Golden Bee, above the hall'door of a great counting-house, there is not too much business in it, and the Celtic touch adds fantasy to a very charming, well-put-together book. There is a lover and his lass and the lover’s father and the father’s partner for a villain, and they all go gathering honey. Some get stung and some do not, and the bees buzzing merrily make a very pleasant noise. "I Have Been Young” is written powerfully and with sincerity. In its frank revelation of a woman's struggle, under the deadweight of a drinkcraving husband, to support herself and her children, there are moments which may easily shock some readers. Others will find in it a noble strain allied to a heroism that exhilarates; and some again will take from the unlit gloom of its pages only weariness and depression. Clearly it is not a book for all tastes. Yet however one may feel about it, no one can deny to It the firm success of its purpose, its vividness, and its full-blooded vitality. MISCELLANY “Experts predict a decline in the number of books published,” says an English writer. “Perhaps they prophesy too soon. There seems no present scarcity in fiction, biography, or politics. And travel, with books on. Europe, America, and the Antipodes, has hardly begun.” Discussing in the “Manchester Guardian” the proposed Irislh Academy of Letters, of which the nucleus —Mr. Yeats and Mr. Shaw —already exists, Mr. Allan Monkhouse observes that many of the suggested academicians are eminent English writers. “Mr. Shaw and Mr. Yeats, no doubt, have Irish characteristics of Which they are proud,” he says, “but when we read them at their best they belong to something very much wider than Ireland.” Mr. Monkhouse proceeds to an amusing discussion, and ends with the following anecdote: “A considerable number of years ago,” he snys, “there was! an eminent parson, the Rev. W. A. O’Connor, in Manchester, and he is reported to have said: ‘I was in Italy with another Irishman —.’ ‘But.” said his interlocutor, ‘I thought so-and-so was an Englishman? ‘Yes, yes,’ said O’Connor; ‘I was using the word Irishman in its comprehensive sense.’ ”.

“Economics!” exclaimed Mr. Henry W. in a recent address at Manchester. “The subject was unknown in my young days, and now everyone is talking about economics, nothing but economics’, for ever and ever.”

Mr. Shaw, under protest and in fury, it is reported, has become a life member of the new Independent Theatre Club.- “I don’t care a split perdition about your wretched club; but I suppose you must hava your twenty guineas. Only I will not be a patron nor a vice-president nor any such nonsense. It is against my rules, and would make me responsible for your reckless adventures. If you like to sav that the list of life members already includes . . . etc.. I cannot publicly deny it and am helpless. . . .”

new short stories

“The Best Short Stories of 1932.” Vol. 1, English (with Irish and C°,*9H ial stories), edited by Edward J. O Brien (London: Cape); "The Salutation, by Sylvia Townsend Warner (London • Chatto and Windus) ; "Through the MeX Gate,” by R H. Mottram (London : Chatto . and Windus) “Adown the Tigris I Was Borne, by Shalimar (Edinburgh: Blackwood). With three books of short stories each by a single author and one representative of many at hand, it seems fitting to take first Mr. O’Brien’s compilation, containing as it does examples of some of the best' work published during the year. He demands a high standard, and for an author’s work to be included in his volume is in itself an honour. Mr. O’Brien seems uneasy about the future of t e English short story; yet, judged by the level reached in this book, there can be no reason to doubt its present excellence. Two of the stories, Mr. L. A. G. Strong’s "Don Juan and the Wheelbarrow” and Mr. H. E. Bates’s “A Flower Piece,” have already been issued in collections of their authors’ work and have been reviewed in these columns.

A subtle awareness and understanding of all things around her combine to give to Miss Townsend Warner's prose a quality of sensitive beauty. All she writes is invested with a very definite charm, but that beautiful quality is nowhere better exhibited than in the most straightforward of her stories, "Elinor Barley, one of the two long tales in the book. It is a vividly-told tragedy of a widow who marries again unwisely and is gradually brought into a state of mind in which she murders her husband. The other tales are pleasant and none more so than "The Best Bed" and an unusual glimpse of Emily Bronte aud her home. It was with his novels of the war, the “Spanish Farm” trilogy, that Mr. Mottram first attracted notice. Since then he has made his mark as a novelist in less sensational fields. Now, however, he comes again with stories and sketches of the war which, in spite of the present rather pronounced distaste for war books, should be missed by no one Interested in a normal, intelligent man’s reactions to the happenings of those terrible four years. "Normal is the adjective which seems best suited to these stories; they contain nothing hysterical and there is no desire for sensationalism. Much the finest and the longest part of the book is that entitled "A Personal Record,” which was first published by the Scholartis Press. 11ns is an account of just how the war appeared to an insignificant subaltern, Lieutenant Mottram, and it is for that very reason especially valuable. The title story of “Shalimar’s” book is also concerned with the war. It shows an unsual side of the Mesopotamian campaign—life on a British gunboat on the Tigris. For the rest, the tales are all of fresh and breezy doings, with the true tang of the open sea. “Shalimar” is a first-class spinner of yarns, and this new collection shows the same fine power of descriptive writing which made his first volume, “Around the Horn and Home Again,” so deservedly popular. z

GOOD REPRINT FICTION Much delightful reading at a price which imposes little strain on the most meagre of incomes is to be had at present in the cheap fiction reprints of some famous publishing houses. J. M. Dent and Sons have just issued five of their most successful novels in their Popular Edition of Modern Fiction —“The Balance,” by Miss Ada Harrison, whose delightful “There and Back" it may be remembered appeared a few months ago; “Oliver's Daughter,” by Richard Church; “Lisa,” by Edith Young; and “Peter Lavelle,” by John Brophy, all charming novels; and “Roc: A Dog’s Eye View of War,” Edmund Vale’s moving story with its illustrations by Ruth Vale. “Shepherd Easton’s Daughter,” not well-known, but a beautiful story of English peasant life by the late Mary J. H. Skrine, and two of Mr. E. M. Forster’s finest works, “A Passage to India,” and "Howard’s End,” now appear in Edward Arnold’s attractive Kingfisher Library. Joseph Conrad’s “Nostromo,” and Mr. Comptou Mackenzie’s “Extraordinary Women,” are new volumes in the New Adelphi Library, now published jointly by Martin Seeker and J. M. Dent and Sons, and William Blackwood and Sons have issued a popular edition of “The Southseaman, by Weston Martyr, the thrilling lifestory of a schooner. Then for the short story lover there ore four cheap volumes. “New Zealand Short Stories,” edited by O. N. Gillespie, is included in the Popular Edition of Modern Fiction: Miss Maud D. Haviland’s “The Wood People,’ clever studies of nnimal life, is in the Kingfisher Library: and Jonathan Cape has put into the Traveller’s Library "Frost in April,” stories and sketches by Mainchi Whitaker. Lastly. Blackwood _ provides a welcome cheap edition of “Shalimar’s” best-known book, “Around the Horn and Home Again.”

Reviews and Passing Notes

VICTORIAN POETRY

Its Beauty Underlined By Miss Edith Sitwell

“The Pleasures of Poetry,” a Critical Anthology, by Edith Sitwell; third series, the Victorian Age (London: Duckworth).

Miss Sitwell’s introductions to the three volumes of her anthology must surely be among the pleasantest, most valuable criticism of English poetry. She has already done for the proud Augustan age and the Romantic revival what she does for certain of the Victorian poets in the present third volume. Changes of fashion, as such, or of attitude and feeling, concern her hardly at all. In her present introduction, for instance, is no whisper of pre-Raphael-ism, no word of the links, large or small, between three of her principal exponents of Victorian poesy—Rossetti, William Morris, and Swinburne. She considers them not at all as people, but I simply as poets and craftsmen, the -fashioners of beauty; and in this spirit devotes herself to the poetry itself and to explaining in excellent fashion the delight she finds in it. The justice of her general title—" The Pleasures of Poetry”—and of the view already expressed that her criticism is singularly pleasant and enriching seems for those reasons to be quite established. She begins her introduction with a delightful tale of the “very young lady” who, more years ago than she cares to remember, went to the little cemetery at Bonchurch and placed offerings in the Greek manner—milk, bay-wreath, roses, and honeycomb—upon the grave of Algernon Charles Swinburne. "The nolonger young lady," she says, "was then, and is still, much in love with the poems of Swinburne, with Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market,’ and with certain other of the work of slightly older poets, Edgar Allan Poe, Tennyson, and Edward Fitzgerald—or perhaps I should say with Omar Khayyam, as seen through the eyes of Edward Fitzgerald. She had, and has still, an affection (though a lesser one) for certain of the works of William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Robert Browning.” The poets named are' the only ones whose work finds a place in the volume. Miss Sitwell wastes no time explaining her choice, beyond saying that she has refused to include any poems which she does not enjoy, or any poets who, according to her feeling, should be rejected. Such versifiers as Mr. T. E. Brown, with his “wot,” "plot,” “god,” “grot” complex, she cannot, and will not, include. Emily Bronte’s poetry is dismissed also, and in justification two of her stanzas are set ruthlessly alongside some magnificent lines of Byron on a similar theme. The onlyother one actually posted missing is Matthew Arnold—“all we need say of him is that he will remain the only educated versifier whose verses are admired by those people who dislike poetry.” TWO READABLE NOVELS “Jenny Newstead,” by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes (London: Heinemann); “Hot Water,” by P. G. Wodehouse (London: Jenkins). This new story of Mrs. Belloc Lowndes is of rather soluble hue, with the usual overtone of mystery and crime. Jenny Newstead’s vital experiences almost all take place in the museum in which she works, a rather unusual setting for a romance. Her real life commences after the mysterious disappearance of her husband of three days. Mrs. Belloc Lowndes's character studies are always acute and interesting, and in “Jenny Newstead” she adds the fascination of an ingenious plot which is not unravelled until the last pages—a book to be recommended to all lovers of mystery stories. Mr. Wodehouse has added yet another to his long array of humorous romances. The hero this time is Patrick B. Franklyn, otherwise “Packy," young American millionaire and sportsman. He exhibits all that chivalry so inevitably inspired in P.G.'s heroes by a lady in distress (so long as she has youth and baeuty), and as psual his chivalry is in the end accorded the proper kind of gratitude on the part of the lady. Mr. Wodehouse’s characters move in the higher strata of. society and have title enough and to spare; but he fits in Soup Slattery, a safe-blower, and Oily Carlyle, a confidence man, very adroitly. Their more aristocratic brethren do not disdain them, on the contrary they employ them. The plot is intricate and interesting, and extremely amusing, —Mr. Wodehouse at his best.BOOKS ON ECONOMICS (By Professor B. E. Murphy.) “The Intelligent Man’s Guide Through the World Chaos,” by G. D. H. Cole. (London: Gollancz.) In this work Mr. Cole, in characteristic and interesting vein, meanders over the wide field of national and international economic problems. He has indeed attempted too much witbin the compass of a single volume, with the result that the book lacks both unity and cohesion ; and it is to be feared that the intelligent man will be either too intelligent or too impatient to follow the treatment to its end in nearly seven hundred close pages.' Mr. Cole sprawls somewhat aimlessly, but usually- in clever and interesting fashion, with occasional lapses into tedium, over a wide range of contemporary problems. The war and the world crisis, both brilliantly, treated, are followed by an excursus into the economic history of the last two centuries, and a review of the existing economic system, which Mr. Cole, though he does not admin. it treats in a very fair and objective manner. Then follow sections on prices, currency, trade fluctuations, unemployment. the tariff, public finance, and trusts, with a sketch of the Soviet system and the alternatives facing the world to-day. It is tasty feeding for the most part, but too varied for the average mental digestion 'at one meal. The work, however, is acute, penetrating and fair, and if the intelligent layman really assimilates it he will have gone a long way toward understanding our present perplexities. It is brimful of suggestive passages, and displays a shrewd and balanced judgment. Like most similar works it eludes thumbnail review summarisation. It is a marvel at the price, but on the whole more success would have been achieved had the scope been more limited and the treatment less sketchy. “We Have Paid Enough,” a symposium by various authors. (Sydney: Angus and Robertson.) This is a spirited but one-sided presentation of the case for the cancellation by America of European war debts. It is vigorous rather than judicial, and extremely one-sided, but never dull, though, from its mode of composition, necessarily repetitive to n great extent. It is not likely to convince opponents, or even, if widely read, to promote international amity across the Atlantic, but it is nd- I mirably calculated to strengthen believers in the faith.