THE BOOKMAN

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 30, 4 August 1917, Page 10

THE BOOKMAN

SOME RECENT NOVELS,

"This is the End." By Stella Benson. MacMillan and Co., London.

This is a remarkably clever fabric of fact and fancy, a most unusual book. "I I'ose," by the same writer, published a year or so ago, dealt with the woman's point of view of things in general, and her sex-importamcei in particular. "I Pose" was an instant success. It was rather longer than "This is the End," but, brilliant as it was, it must take second place to this latest creation of Stella Benson. "This is the End" bears reading several times, and reveals new beauties at every reading. Its style is suggestively French, and yet it deals exclusively with English j>eople and their sometimes queer ways of looking at things. Humour and pathos, poetry and satire, are here used in perfectly admirable proportions to make a most charming book. It is all about Jay, an emotional and imaginative young lady of strong views on woman's true place in the world, who becomes a 'bus conductor.; also about her beloved brother, Kew, who is a wounded officer home on leave when the book opens. There are other incidental characters. The writer deals with consummate skill with psychical problems which her various types offer for solution. In the process she amazes her readers by her dexterity in delineation. She knows her London well, too, and loves it, even when at its dreariest, and she has the truly remarkable gift of imparting to those who know and love it too its very atmosphere, humid, heavy, and acrid with coal smoke. "This is the End" is a book to keep. To call it a novel is almost a misnomer. It is a dazzling literary achievement. .

"Penrod and Sam." By Booth Tarkington. Hodder and Stoughton, London.

Of this book it would be best to say, as the picture censor says 'of certain films, that it should only be seen by persons over the age of 18. For if read by boys, and they were led to emulate the deeds of. the two youthful heroes, there would be deadly feuds in New Zealand households. Kach chapter tells of some mischievous episode in or about Penrod's or Sam's dwelling, resulting in pain and tribulation either to themselves or their white or negro companions, or to some unfortunate dog or cat. The American atmosphere imparted to the book by the introduction of negro boys seems a little strange at first, but the reader soon gets interested, and may possibly regret that in his own youthful days he failed to develop such a genius for mischief. Some of the incidents are intensely funny. . One such is the stuffing and pinning together by Penrod, the chief conspirator, of a dozen of his elder sister's stockings to make a long black snake, with a kitten fastened inside one end to give the necessary motive power; another is when, having neglected to prepare his composition for school, he hastily snatches up the same sister's love letter, and later reads it aloud in class for the edification of teacher and schoolfellows. But as, according to the poet, "No one is so accursed by fate, no one so utterly desolate, but some heart, though unknown, responds unto his own/ so in the last incident recorded— a children's birthday party—Penrod discovers that he' has touched a responsive chord in the heart of a twelve-year-old maiden. Such; however, is the perversity of human nature that her admiration is mainly excited by the fact that Penrod is held guilty of several dastardly tricks played upon the youthful guests-^ about the only tricks related in the book of which he happens to be innocent! So it may well be doubted if, after all, the girls are much better than the boys.

"The Three . Miss Graemes." By S. Macnaughto'n. Thomas Nelson and Sons, London.

Miss,Macxiaughton died quite Tecently, and her premature end was hastened, it is believed, by her devotion to Red Cross work in Belgium. She made an instantaneous success with "Christina M'Nab" and "The Lame Dog's Ldary." The novel under review is'more in the character of "Christina." It concerns the entry of three i'rseh Highland girls into London society, and the conquest they make there. Incidentally it shows that the late Miss Macnaughton did not gain her knowledge of human nature solely in the open Highlands, nor in cloistered obscurity, but went out into the world for it. She shows herself to be a true artist in the delineation of character in all her works, but more so, perhaps, in "The Three Miss Graemes."

" The Happy Garret : Personal Recollections of Hebe Hill." Edited by V. Goldie. William Heineinanit, London.

The writer most accurately describes this novel in its last paragraph : "So I have done my best, and I am bound to say that it does not strike me as being up to much; but my editor seems to think it is readable. . . Ariadne encourages me by telling me that a book called ' Fanny Hill; or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" has had a steady sale in the back streets lor the past century or so. I do not know whether Fanny Hill was an ancestress of my own. Possibly she was, as she seems to have had similar proclivities, although she indulged them, if I am correctly informed, to a very mudh greater degree than I am disposed to do. However that may be, if my first book is accepted as a companion work to hers it will solve the problem of keeping alive,. I wish it would solve the problem of living; but that is a very much more difficult matter." Before tfie Wych-street-Holywell-etreefc area was pulled down and the Strand improved, a certain class of booksellers was always to be found there; also round about Lei-cester-square. They may not all have become extinct, but they wci'e dispersed with the widening of the Strand. On the shelves of such booksellers' shops "The Happy Garret" is eligible for a* place.