THE FIFTY BEST

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 17

THE FIFTY BEST

NOVELS OF 1932

INTERESTING SUMMARY

Probably no two compilers would agreo in their list of the fifty best novels published, in 1932: in fact, to compile such a list^ is to invite at once a storm of criticism. The "Manchester Guardian," however, has essayed such a task, remarking that when several thousand works of fiction are published in the year it is not easy to reduce the final.sifting to fifty, and consequently there are many books which hovered on the margins of inclusion and have, had to be left out.. Many good foreign translations have been omitted, and so also have English novels of a eomfortablo middle-class standard which either carried their authors' reputations no farther or lacked some mark of distinction. Through the fine sieve of selection remain thoso in the list. They are far from, equal in merit, and some of them may be forgotten in a few months' time, but each one has at least some claim to interest, and the whole assembly may be taken as representative of what novelists have been thinking and writing during the past year. The fifty novels selected are as follows:—"The Fountain," Charles Morgan; "Flowering Wilderness," John Galsworthy; "Faraway," J. B. Priestley; "The Fortress," Hugh "Walpole; "They Were Defeated," Rose Macaulay; "The House. Under the Water," F. Brett Young; "Brave New World," Aldous. Huxley; "Inheritance," Phyllis Bentley; "Without My Cloak,/' Kate O'Brien; "Magnolia Street," Louis Golding; "Eoyal Flush," Margaret Ir.win; "Evensong," Beverley Nichols;' "Sons." Pearl S. Buck; "Black Mischief," Evelyn Waugb"; "Lament for Adonis," Edward .Thjmpson;, "Three- Loves," A. J. Cronin; "The Soldier and tho Gentlewoman," Hilda Vaiighan; "Queer Street," Edward Shanks; "Wise and Foolish Virgins," Marguerite .Steen; "The Georgian House," Frank Swinnerton; "A Long Time Ago,".Margaret Kennedy; "The Bridge," Naomi Boyde-Smith; "That Was Yesterday," Storm Jameson;. "Thank Heaven Fasting," E. M. Delafield; "Secret Sentence," Vivki Baumj "Ballerina," Lady Eleanor Smith; "Boomerang," Helen Simpson; "The Brothers," L. A. G. Strong; "Sontango," James Hilton; "Little Eed Horses," G. B. Stern; "The Store," T. S. Stribling; "Invitation to the Waltz," Rosamond Lehmann; "To the North," Elizabeth Bowen; "The Narrow Corner," W. Somerset Maugham; " Belinda Grove,'' Helen Ashton; "Jenny Wren," E. H. Young; "The Scornful Man," Muriel Harris; "Marino Parade," Ivor Brown; "Shadows on the Bock," "Willa Cather; of Ness," Erie Linklater; "She Was Sophia," Buth Manning-Sanders; "I Have Been Young," Elizabeth Lomond; "Cold Comfort Farm," Stella Gibbins; "Fanfare for Tin Trumpets," Margery Sharp; "Butler's Gift,'? Martin Hare; "The Lost Generation," Buth Holland; "Nymph Errant," James Layer; "Snow on. Water," Merle Eyles; "His Imported Wife," Beryl Clarke. ■ OLD BRIGADE AND THE NEW. At the head stands "The Fountain," by Mr. Charles Morgan, given this place in the arbitrary assertion that it is the best novel produced in the year. The story is concerned .with British oflicers interned in Holland during the war. It was published early in the spring,'but'nothing has since appeared to surpass it. Then follow the masters whose books are accepted on trust by the faithful, though -not always read without qualms of disloyal uneasiness.. With "Inheritance" comes a long company of the good and the competent, some of them almost untried craftsmen and some of them well set and familiar. Mr. Galsworthy has embarked on another saga, and '' Flowering Wilderness carries on the love affairs.of Dinny Charwell to the chorus of Flew and' other familiar friends." "Faraway" is also good -Priestley, though it falls behind "Angel Pavement" and is too long for the matter it contains. The same fault might bo found with "The Fortress," and most people would feel more cheerful about the.fourth in Mr. Walpole's series if. he had allowed Judith Paris to die. at the end of this one. To let a character, even one so vital as Judith, live to the age of a hundred is rather to strain her welcome. Miss -Rose Maeaulay has ■ abandoned her gay and; cynical digs at modern times and gone back to Herrick and the Civil War. "Tho. House Under the Water" describes the building of the Birmingham Waterworks in. a Welsh valley. It. has tHe high,merit of being thoroughly interesting all tho way through. Mr.. Aldous' Huxley has the same quality from an entirely different angle. His "Brave New World" stands out as one of tho novels of the year which linger persistently in., .'the reader's memory. . The three next. on', the list carried their authors on a sudden and meteor flight into the. ranks of the best sellers. "Without My Cloak" ( is a first novel which scarcely shows any of the faults of inexperience. Miss Phyllis Bentley's careful and excellent study of a Yorkshire family stands far above the ordinary level of fiction, and "Magnolia Street," with its Jews on one side and its Gentiles on the other, is a book of abounding life, and freshness. That these three should have been so successful—all. of them long and none without thought and some tragedy— might be taken as a "sign that the •popular taste in fiction is improving. Miss Margaret Irwin follows with the ambitious "Royal Flush"—a,story of the exiled Stuarts after tho execution of Charles I. Historical novels have' been popular this year, f Eoyal Flush" touches the high-water mark of their quality. It is vivid, beautifully written, interesting from the first appearance of Minette. as a small child to her death as tho wife of the degenerato • Monsieur. • " Miss Elizabeth Lomond opens a little group of young experimenters whose efforts aro perhaps the most interesting in: the whole selection. They have all mado good beginnings, and anything they may do in "the future should be worth watching. NOVELS OF SIGNIFICANCE. Of the novels whose names are given it is only possible to mention a few, with the assurance that the rest are all good of their kind and can bo recommended to anyone who has chanced to miss them. A more or less random glance at the list lights on somfe which have a definite significance. There is, for instance, "Boomerang," by Helen Simpson, which is thick with incident and' colour and worth all the time that is spent in reading it. "The Brothers" is another notable book. It has a kind of Old Testament starkness of tragedy, spread with much more art than there is in the unrelieved gloom of Mr. A. J. Cronin's "Three Loves." "Sons"'is a sequel to "Tho Good Earth" and carries on the story of the sons of Wang. "Family History" is less ' directly a sequel to "The Edwardiaus" and a much loss interesting novel —partly, perhaps, becauso stories of the moneyed classes seem to have a certain artificiality in these times. People who are hungry must find little pleasure in the descriptions of the Lord Mayor's banquet, and the ordinary reader is apt to find his sympathy with Miss Sackvillo West's heroine alienated by .her heedless buying of clothes, her pearls, her cars, her son at Eton. On the other side of the scale is Miss Marguerite Steen's tender story of Liverpool, slum life, "Wise and Foolish Virgins." With "She Was Sophia" it ranks as the best

child study of the yeari "Little Red Horses," also about children, is affected, and unreal beside theso two. Mr. Ivor Brown's clever picture of the English seasido scene, observed by an American whose roots lie there, is one of the notable books; another is "Queer Street," by Edward Shanks. In "A Long Time Ago" Miss Margaret Kennedy, still misses the peak on which "The Constant Nymph" triumphantly rests, but it is unfair, though almost inevitable, to measure all her later books by this standard. Mr. James Hilton is a novelist who tries experiments, and "Contango" is an interesting round-robin of effects touching isolated people in different parts of the world. "Evensong" and "Ballerina" both deal with the decay of great artists, and "Thank Heaven Fasting" with the society marriage market, of the pre-war years. Miss Vieki Baum has.produced -two novels this year, and "Secret Sentence" has been given a place for its sincerity and its unusual theme.

OTHERS WORTH ATTENTION.

Mdst people have; greeted "I Have Been Young," by Elizabeth Lompnd, as a first noyel, but there is strong internal evidence that the author of "Margaret Protests," published some yearsago, does not share in this belief. It is a gloomy and interesting study of drunkenness, sex, and poverty. The younger writers incline to eheerfulncss, pleasantly blended with cynicism. "Fanfare for Tin Trumpets", is, in-: deed, gay. The best things ; in it are the character^ of Ma Parker and Winnie and the opening, description of the man who shut himself up in his room to study Arabic and was found after his death to have an immense library of detective novels. In "Nymph Errant" Mr. James Layer handles impropriety delicately and has produced a fantasia, which is as improbable as it is entertaining. "Cold Comfort Farm" burlesques the Sussex school of noyelists and is an enchanting blend of dialect, sweat, the dark forces of Nature, and the bovine peasant. '' Snow on Water goes bravely to Finland and is a book of astonishing maturity. So, too, is "The Lost Generation," . Miss Holland's second effort. . Martin Hare, who is-apparently a woman, has many good qualities, and "Butler's, Gift" is a most readable story of a ramshackle Irish family in the days of ambushes and terrors. "His Imported Wife" offers a. new aspect of the AngloAmerican marriage. All these novels are worth attention not only for their own, sake, but. in the light of what their authors may do next time.'