SOME NEW NOVELS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 106, 1 November 1930, Page 21

SOME NEW NOVELS

A SMALL SELECTION

By. the success of ''The Good Companions, '' Mr. J. B. Priestley definitely took his place as one of tho novelists of the day. He had been accused before of being an essayist, and in the successor to "The Good Companions" there is justification perhaps for this charge. "Angel Pavement" (Heinemann) is really a series of excellent essays on different London types, and Mr< Priestley is much more concerned with his Characters than with his plot. There is the- wretched clerk who falls in love with his employer's daughter, who uses him for her own ends but omits to. count on the worm's turning; the bespectacled little chief clerk, a willing slave to columns of figures, fearful of penury in his old age; the institute girl, efficient and hard, but ever dreaming of romance underneath; the public school principal looking down on the commerce which he condescends to adorn, and its reply to him; and many another. The whole is charming and Dickens-like, but not as good as "The Good Companions." War books still come. Amongst the latest are "Not Mentioned," by Andrew Soutar, acid "Martin Make-Be-lieve," by Gilbert Frankau, both of which are published by Hutchinson and Co. "Not. Mentioned" is a bluntlytold, vivid conception of England in time of war. There is no glory in it, nor honour; the whole crude business of fighting is put on the basis of a'moneymaking; or money-defending proposition. France supported Russia because of unliquidated debts; America was drawn in for the same reason; England fights because defeat means ruin. These arc- the arguments of Farmer Browne's eldest son Caleb, who is regarded as a pro-German by his father and by the neighbours. Gradually his point of view is tolerated as Browho sees three of his children killed through the war, one son in actual fighting, and a younger son and daughter dying by their own hand.' The most brutal side of warfare and the wholo question of morality is put forth impersonally, if crudely, V>y the author. In "Martin Make-Believe" we have .'mother aspect of an old .subject—the effect that war lias upon the character and circumstances of an idealistic man, and upon those directly connected with him. Martin Kenterton, the "Martin Make-Be-lieve" of Frankau's novel, has a great and simple I',-iiili in his fellow creatures: atid in his friendships, nuivrierl life, and business associations lie is imposed upon and deceived until lie finally makes a mess of his whole life. Tlie courage of one girl alone enables him to take hold again. It is an interesting study of a lovable man. "The Jesting Army" is the title of Ernest Raymond's new novel, another war book, published by Cassell and Co. This is in some ways a brilliant piece of descriptive writing, but is far too sentimental. It is of wide range in that the. story covors throe fronts —the Gallipoli campaign, the Sinai campaign, and fighting on the W Tcstern Front. The author draws liberally on his own great experiences, and paints the most graphic and lurid pictures of the hopeless heroism at the Dardanelles, the jjrim endurance and desert marches of our troops in the East, and the terrific, nervebreakiiig -rain of the Sommc and Ypres battles before and during the great retreat of 193 S. Ho makes live once again the realities without unduly dwelling on the-nastiness of war. "If the war has done nothing else, it has shown us what a lot of fools there are in the world, in England and Germany, to say nothing of France," remarks one character in "Mrs. Fischer's War" by Henrietta Leslie (Jarrolds). This is a remarkably fine novel on tho theme of the English girl married to an "alien enemy." There was. deep tragedy in some such marriages between the years 1914 and 191S, and Henrietta Leslie has treated tho subject with such sincerity of feeling that Mr. John Galsworthy has felt constrained to add a commendatory foreword. It is some years since there has been a now novel by Harold Bell Wright, lie comes to -light again, however, iv "Exit" (D. Applctou and Co.). To the romantic and dramatic plot is added a purpose, that of helping-to a fuller realisation of the influence which those whom we call dead exert over the characters and lives of those who live after them. It attempts to say that death is uo more final and irrevocable than many other changes which occur in our lives. It tries to malte real the truth that the play (Life) docs not end when an indij virtual actor makes an exit—cither for i those who remain on the stage or for those who stand in the wings. "The Lion and the Lamb" (Hodder and Stoughton) hardly comes up to the b'-.'St which E. Phillips Oppenheim can k'ive. For all that, it is a good tale, well told,.and those who have read his previous novels will find in this the rapid-fire action to which they are accustomed. ' In the first six months of 1929 the number of books recorded in the "Publications of the Week" columns of the "Publisher and Bookseller" numbered 5708. In the current year the -total has grown to 8017, an increase of 40.45 per cent. If the rate of increase.is maintained .for the second half of the year the year's total output of books will be nearly 18,000.