A NOVEL OF YOUTH

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 19

A NOVEL OF YOUTH

"Rough Hewn." By Dorothy Canfield. \ London : Jonathan Cape (from "Whitcombe and Tombs). ■ . . Readers of Dorothy Canfield'^ novel, Vlhe Brimming Cup," will find in' "Rough Hewn" the history of the.childhood and yputh of Marise and Neale, the outstanding characters in the former novel. In "Rqugh Hewn," Neale is shown as a, small boy. brought up in the suburban atmosphere of a big city, given to games, always unsentimental and uncommunicative, "silent as an Iroquois"— | a phrase which the writer uses over and j over again. The reader follows him through school and University, and business, alwaya reserved and thoughtful, searching for something that he cannot find, finally going to Rome, still pursuing the elusive. Marise is brought up in a French town, thechild of American parents, who are seeking culture in a French atmosphere. It is a wonderful picture here that the writer give 3of the life, in the. foreign town, the gos.sipy household, with its faithful domestic,old Jeanne, and the shallow little mother with her tragic death. It is not. until Marise and Neale are in their i. early twenties tljat they meet in Rome, and the book ends in their finding each other and happiness. "Hand in < hand in the fierce, literal brightness of the noonday sun they trod theiv new path over the ancient stones." The whole course of the lives of-the. heroine and hero are traced with pairistaking care. There is no plot, but some highly tikilfuj character drawing. ' ' . '