PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 63, 11 September 1937, Page 26

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The Chief Librarian of the Wellington public libraries has chosen "Three Comrades," by Erich Maria Remarque, as the book of the week, and has furnished the following review:—

Herr Remarque's newest novel treats of a post-war friendship between three men, all of whom had fought during hostilities between 1914 and 1919. Robert Lohkamp, Otto Koster, and Gottfried Lenz are the three young men, and their friendship for each other and their enthusiasm about their racing motor-car Karl form the basis of the story. Karl is a "wreck" with a first-rate engine, which is- secretly tuned up for speed in a motor-shed which is kept away from public view. One of the three, Lohkamp, falls in love with a beautiful girl, a rather misty character, who is perhaps a little less true to life than the three young men themselves. The story moves against the swiftly-moving background of a German city in the north: motor races, enforced sales of the car, beer gardens, and so on forming a kind of life in which forced gaiety, pre-occu-pation with the past, and defying of the future make a rather artificial and high-pitched form of life. Lohkamp finally has the unhappiness of seeing Patricia Hollmann, the girl with whom he is" in love, dying in a sanatorium, while Lenz and Koster try to make things easier for him. Lenz, however, is murdered, and Koster has lost his car which he has sold in an effort to pay the sanatorium expenses.

The story, although it is placed in the mouth of one of the main characters, is a very real and moving piece of writing. The qualification is necessary because Lohkamp with all his cynicism and idealism mixed together so queerly is not the character for the expression of Herr Remarque's outbursts and views upon post-war life in Germany, nor for his reflections upon life in -general. Penetrating as the book is, obsessed as Herr Remarque is with the tragedy of life, in some aspects the book does not altogether ring true. His idealism is a little divorced from reality: it is fine idealism none the less.

In view of the recent publication of Mr. John A. Lee's book "Civilian into Soldier," with so many features of similarity to Remarque's early work "All Quiet on the Western Front," it is very interesting to compare the two processes of change: from civilian into soldier and from soldier into civilian. The civilian rapidly became an adequate and satisfactory soldier; the soldier found good citizenship something of an effort. Man, after all, is a complicated piece of machinery, easily put out of adjustment, and much less easily restored to his complete former balance.

Mr. Richard Church says of this book: "The book is full of wise and penetrating things, which emerge from its general compassion and tenderness like gestures out of sorrow. "Night is Nature's prophecy against the leprosy of civilisation," says Otto to Robert. And more cynically, but founded on what full experience, another friend says: "Only the stupid conquer in life; the other man foresees too many obstacles and becomes uncertain before he starts." None of those friends were stupid enough. RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS. Other titles selected from recent accession lists are as follows: —General: "Galloping Days," by F. Bone; "The False Nero," by L. Feuchtwanger; "Jane's Parlour," by O'Douglas. Fiction: "Scientific Progress," by Sir J. Jeans; "Circuit Dust," by ,B. Lyndon; "This was the Kingdom," by F. Owen and R. J. Thompson.