PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 82, 3 October 1936, Page 28

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The Chief Librarian of the Wellington Public Libraries has ciiosen "They Walk in the City," Dy J. B. Priestley, as the book of the week, and has furnished the following review:—

A new book by Mr. J. B. Priestley is always welcome, and in tliis n»west work, "They Walk in the City," ho maintains in every respect his reputai tion as a brilliant writer and storyteller. "They Walk in the City" is a story of the youth of today, and ■Mr. Priestley has a rare capacity to write about the young people of England (surrounded as they are by so much •economic and political confusion) with infinite charm and a deep understanding of their problems. While the story has little to say of the maelstrom of modern life in its other aspects with all its complications and swift and often violent changes the reader' is constantly aware of it ... a sombre undertone in the lives of all the characters. '

The story opens in Haliford, a Yorkshire textile town which has seen better days but which has lost its prosperity in the depression. Mr. Priestley's brief review of the history of this town is wonderfully vivid, and from it the reader obtains a clear impression of the atmosphere of Haliford and a perfect picture of the lives of its inhabitants. In describing the town the author enables us to know intimately the people who live there and the kind, of lives they lead.

Having given us this picture of Haliford, Mr. Priestley proceeds to introduce his chief characters. They are Rose Salter, the daughter of an English working-class family, and Edward Fielding, a young man whose family was once moderately prosperous. Rose is a delightful girl who, Mr. Priestley says, could hardly have been expected to be as wholesome, comely, and even beautiful as she is. "The fact runs counter to all our accepted knowledge of what is good and bad for human beings. All the conditions of her twenty-year-old life had been monstrous. From earliest childhood she had been denied sunlight, good air, proper food, and exercise. She ought to have been a premature hag, with a crooked , spine, gummy eyes, rotting teeth. Yet somehow out of this dreadful mess of rubber teats, sinister teething powders, dirty linen, over-heated rooms, pastry, fish and chips, dubious laxatives, dreadful patent medicines, ignorance, swinishness, savagery, had emerged this healthy, handsome' young creature. Nature had found a way to circumvent the idiocy of half-civilised man. Or perhaps this was a legacy from her ancestors, Salters who had been hard moorland shepherds or labourers on the great wheat farms in the plain of York, whose wholesome red blood still flowered —it might be for the last time—in this evil industrial soil." So much for Rose. Then there is her family. There was nothing of the downtrodden proletarian about the Salters. "They belonged to that section, of the workers which is the despair of the austere revolutionary "' They all had an amazing vitality and zest for life which they thoroughly enjoyed. There were six Salters exiisting in a small, cramped abode but

. . . "there was more shouting, more bustle in this little house than there is at most railway stations. Every member of the family had friends who continually popped in and out. The wireless set worked at full blast. The females were always making one another cups of tea; the males were always opening bottles of beer or slipping out for a jug of old ale. Every weekend seemed with them like Christmas." Among all these noisy, good-natured, good-hearted people, Rose, quiet, restful, sometimes dreamy (but by no means without a full measure of good sense) was different.

Edward Fielding's home was very different to that of the Salters. It was cold and drab. His father was a weak little man, his mother a. bitter, disillusioned woman who worshipped the elder of her two sons—Herbert, an analytical chemist whose successful life was always being used to reproach Edward.

Edward and Rose meet, and different circumstances move them to London. There, in that great city with its teeming, hurrying millions, their romance, so delicately and beautifully told, blossoms. The kaleidoscopic life of London is dramatically and brilliantly described and we see Edward and Rose moving amidst it all, two somewhat forlorn and pathetic figures struggling to achieve happiness and success. Rose has a better time than Edward, but the jealousy of! older and plainer women makes things difficult. However, their life is not altogether without its joyous interludes, and they meet and become friends with some odd, humorous, and kindly people.

In the end, after Rose has narrowly escaped a somewhat sinister experience they both decide to return to Haliford, thus concluding this chapter of their lives. But we hope that this is not the last we are to hear of Edward and Rose. We want to hear the rest of their story. "They Walk in the City" has charm, humour, poignancy, and understanding of people which make reading it an unforgettable experience.

Other titles selected from recent accession lists are as follows:—General: "Let's Go Home," by K. N. Adams; "More Maoriland Adventures of J. W. Stack," by J. W. Stack; "Suspect," by A. Strawbridge. Fiction: "The Island of Sheep," by J. Buchan; "Bread and Butter." by "Ephesian"; "With Intent to Kill," by E. C. Vivian.