PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 24

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The Chief Librarian of the Wellington Public Libraries has chosen "The One-Eyed Moon," by Marguerite Steen, as the book of the week, and has furnished the following review:— This is a novel of Spanish peasantry, not the highly-coloured typ£s of Mr. Oliver Onions, nor yet the exotic Flamenco dancers of the late Earl of Birkenhead's clever daughter, but a more human, less sophisticated peasantry than either. Between the city and the little village the action hurries rapidly, and the book covers imperceptibly a long period of years. It deals with the married- life of a peasant and his wife, and lists carefully the various stages through which their affections pass. In most respects the peasants, one imagines, are typical; most particularly in the insane jealousy of the mother for her little daughter, founded on an entire misapprehension. The child is the joy of her father's life, but her mother is jealous and; resents the slightest affectionate glance or gesture of which Maravilla and not herself is the object. The restless and passionate lack of forgiveness of the typically ignorant Spanish peasant is seen at its worst in the insensate jealousy with which she regards her daughter,, in the scorn and loathing which she feels for her husband. She is not all the time bitter towards him, but.these unpleasant fits alternate with other fits of equally embarrassing devotion. Their lives grow further apart, and at a time when the husband has learnt how to find his peace in Nature the wife is occupied .all the time in amassing a fortune from her inn and in scheming to place her husband, a ■man altogether devoid of ambition, in the chair of the Alcalde. A breach finally1 comes when the local dignitaries wait upon him to ask him to occupy that, position, and he flatly refuses. There are ugly pages in the book, as when Aurelio punishes a more than ordinarily senseless fit of savagery by beating his wife in a drunken fury. ] The little girl, Carmela's daughter, grows up into a charming woman, her 1 physical and moral welfare looked to by her father rather than by her jealous mother. Then an old affair of Aurelio's comes to light, and an actress, La Maravilla, returns to the city where Maravilla is living with her aunt. The climax is unexpected and most tragic, but probability is not strained in any respect. The types depicted all run according to form, and the entire life of the primitive Spanish hill village as contrasted with the city outside whose borders it lies forms a picture at once attractive, pathetic, and altogether convincing. RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS. Other titles selected from recent accession lists are as follows:—General: 'Some Friends of Doctor Johnson," by F. M. Smith; "Wild Animal Man," by R. W. Thompson; "Who Reads What?" by C. H. Compton; "Hollywood Plays," edited by K. Nicholson; "Gerald," by D. Dv Maurier; "Two Vagabonds in Languedoc," by J. and C. Gordon. Fiction: "Doubtful Joy," by E. Jenkins; Highland Twilight," by J. RossSweet Peril," by J. Ames; "Men Never Know," by V. Baum; "Lucia's Progress," by E. F. Benson; "Middle Age Madness," by M. A. Dormie; T«£ger Slim," by C. Yore; "Enbury Heath," by S. Gibbons.