IN NEW ZEALAND SETTING

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 141, 18 June 1927, Page 21

IN NEW ZEALAND SETTING

'' Life's What You Mako It." By Miss Rosemary Rees. ' London: Herbert Jenkins, Ltd. - Rich, young, charming, unspoiled by a somewhat feckless existence* yet only, half awnke to the serious possibilities of life, Candida comes with Lane Fullerton to New, Zealand for the fishing, asthey did the year, before, just as so many wealthy birds of passage do every year. "Life's what you mako it," says Candida, and she hat- found no reason to doubt it,'- but within twenty'four hours her scheme of life is given a most romantically engrossing wrench, and the comfort of her butterfly existence, :with a butler and grand piano in the "shack" ceases. She is plunged into the depths of; despair, and in the aumbness of her misery finds refuge in hard work, the last thing her friends would have suspected her capable of. How wiser and more serious, yet infinitely more deeply happy, Candida emerges from making the best of a very bad job, is told with an imaginative ingenuity and literary skill which make "Lifi's What You Make It' thoroughly . pleasant reading. There is a mystery surrounding the old storekeeper and his son, and the latter, a saturnine, ■ reserved sort of a chap, . takes quite a big part in Candida's affairs. Characters vividly created are Gwen, a soniGwhut. encarmined camp vamp, Henry Mallard, a "sheep farmer by occupation, but an angler by inclination," Digby Ross, a neighbouring runholder (one of the "Dinks"), and a rascal swagman who figures strongly in the plot. The merry, thoughtless life of summer camps is well drawn, and though tho authoress avoids long descriptions as she would the devil, there are brief peeps that whet a desire to visit the fishing lake of "Taranui" and the nearby Rotorua, the wonders of which are touched upon. In this story, cleverly given a camp setting, there are problems of life 1 that are 'to bo met anywhere, and they aro handled with a sure deftness that hints of a thorough perception of both the beauty and ugliness of life as it is lived to-day. It is soinothing to possess a native novelist who, while making New Zealand attractive to English readers,.does not .convey a false idea of the country and! its people.