PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 88, 13 April 1935, Page 28

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The Chief Librarian of the Wellington Public Libraries has chosen "Shining and True," by G. B. Stern, as the book of the week, and has furnished the following review:—

Miss Gladys Bronwyn Stern Holdsworth, the talented Jewess who writes under the name of G. B. Stern, has taken up the story of the Matriarch on the eve of her eighty-eighth birthday. Only a small group of the familiar Rakonitz family forms the subject of the story, and the book is remarkable in that the action is confined, according to one of the modern fashions, to a single day. ■ ,

The Matriarch, Truda's mother, is the central figure in the story. Periodically she has one of her "bad times," when the whole family is reduced almost to nervous prostration. Although eighty-eight, the old lady in her tits of energy has all the energy and activity of a young modern,' though: with worse consequences. In her abundant generosity she gives away family treasures, invites all classes of strangers back to her daughter's'house, and demands meals at all hours of the night. The Matriarch proves a trial in the household and Truda tells her she must go, but with the ending of a hectic day when the Matriarch arrives home without her usual following, looking , old and worn, Truda realises that another of her "bad times" is over, and forgives her for the trouble caused during the^past six months, and harmony is again restored.

; It is really "a most extraordinary collection of people which the Matriarch gathers round her, including the gigantic landlady and a ragged and horrible little boy who assumes the position of the Matriarch's lieutenant.

The characterisation is marked by Miss Stern's usual care; she has the gift of presenting odd people sometimes with an almost Dickensian grotesquery, and yet fitting them with other equally abnormal types into a composite whole which carries conviction simply because the individuals act so thoroughly according to type. _,

There is a certain thoroughness almost, one might say, pungency of type about the work of modern Jewish women writers, and Miss Stern has that gift to perfection. It manifests itself in a kind of selectivity which throws the whole story into an adequate kind of perfection. Perhaps the method employed in the Matriarch books owes something to the Forsyte Saga scheme, but Miss Stern has not been afraid of reducing unity of time down to the perfection of a single day. Truda is in some Nvays a pathetic character, understanding yet motherridden, and the story of her rebellion, although disappointing in its conclusion, is- a very touching sidelight on the difficulties of any woman in a similar situation. The Matriarch is as dominant as ever throughout the book. RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS. Other1 titles selected from recent accession lists are as follows:—General: "Jock of the Islands," by J. Cromer; "Good-bye for the Present," by E. Acland; "Riding and Horsemanship," by W- Fawcett; "Comrades of the Great Adventure," by H. R. Williams; "The Reign of King George," by D. C. Somervell; "Man Tracks," by. I. L. Idriess; "Tibetan Trek," by R. Kaulback. Fiction: "Second Officer," by "Taffrail"; "House Party," by Mrs. Victor Rickard;. "The Haunted.Hills," by B. M. Bower; "Murder Masquerade," by George Dilnot; "Little Tales," by L. Feuchtwanger; "Wrexham's Romance." by "Ganpat"; "Annals of a Little Shop," by Anne Hepple.