A PRIZE NOVEL

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 103, 28 October 1933, Page 22

A PRIZE NOVEL

"No Second Spring," by Janet Beitli (Hoddcr and Stougkton), is ' a first novel wliieh obtained a 20,000 dollar prize offered by the publishers in conjunction with an American firm. The author is a Scotswoman, and her story describes the life of a Scottish minister and his wife in a remote Highland parish about the middle of tho last century. The book opens with an account of the Eev. Hamish McGregor's journey to the Highlands at night and in a snowstorm with his wife and family. Hamish is a proud and fervent young man. •• His character is concisely indicated in a sentence describing his attitude towards his children: "He seldom smiled at them, regarding them seriously as the gifts of God." Allison is as dutiful as befits "the minister's wife," but often troubled by the disparity between her husband's ,dogmatic pronouncements on life and her own natural conception of it.. The first part of the book tells how Hamish struggles to establish some sort of religious life among the surly Highlanders of Glenlee. Allison is his loyal supporter in' the struggle, but the distance which separates them widens as_ the story advances. When Andrew Simon —a painter touring the Highlands— comes by chance to Glenlee and is invited to stay at the manse wo are prepared for. a familiar triangle.: Andrew, who'has fought at Quatre Bra.3 and Waterloo, is a restless, discontented man, given to "brooding on. the injustice and fruitlessness of tho world." Allison is a littlo shocked by his cynical talk; but gradually they are drawn towards each other, and at length their love cannot be concealed. Once they havo admitted it, however, Allison courageously sends her lover away. • The death of her three children, soon after Andrew's departure, serves only to emphasise once more the fundamental disparity between her nature and Hamlisu's. This conflict is apparently novcr to be resolved, but simply endured, perhaps more easily as time passes. It is a simple story, quietly and effectively told. Miss Beith successfully creates, or recreates, an atmosphere of austerity and propriety iv which the I very diffident love-affair of. Andrew and Allison becomes a salient and dramatio event. Its significance would have been enhanced, perhaps, if the characters involved had been more solidly realised, presented with more of the circumstance of life. But_ it may be unjust to-look for naturalism in a book so lyrical in its tone*