THE FIFTY BEST

Evening Star, Issue 21316, 21 January 1933, Page 19

THE FIFTY BEST

KOVELS OF 1932 INTERESTING SUMMARY. 'Probably. -no two .compilers would ' agree in their list of the_ fifty best novels published in 1932; in fact, to compile such a list is : to invite at once a storm of criticism. The ‘ Manchester . Guardian,’ however, has essayed such a, task, remarking that when several . thousand works of fiction are published in the year it is not easy to reduce the final sifting to fifty, and consequently -there are many books which hovered • on the margins of inclusion and have : had to-be left but. Many good foreign translations have been omitted, and so also have English novels of a comfortable middle-class standard which either carried their authors’ reputations no ... farther or lacked some mark of distinctions Through the fine sieve of selection remain those in-the list. Ihey are far from equal in merit, and some of them may- bo forgotten in a few months’ time, but each one has at least , > 'some* claim to interest,’ and' the whole assembly may be taken as representa- . , :tive of what novelists have heen thinking and writing during the past year. The’ fifty novels selected are as follow: —‘ The Fountain,’ Charles Morgan; ‘ Flowering Wilderness,’ John Galsworthy; ‘Faraway,’ J. B. Priestley; ‘ The Fortress,’ Hugh Walpole; : i They. Were Defeated,’ Rose Macaulay; .‘The House Under the Water,’ F. Brett Young; ‘Brave New World, Aldous Huxley; ‘ Inheritance, Phyllis Bentley; ‘ Without My Cloak,’ Kate O’Brien; ‘ Magnolia Street,’ Louis ' Golding; ‘Royal Flush,’ Margaret Irwin; ‘ Evensong,’' Beverley Nichols; ‘ Sons,’ Pearl S. Buck; ‘Black Mischief,’ Evelyn Waugh; ‘Lament for Adonis,’ Edward Thompson; ‘Three Loves.’ A. J. Cronin; ‘ The Soldier and the’ Gentlewoman,’ Hilda Vaughan; ‘ Queer Street,’ Edward. Shanks; ‘ Wise and Foolish Virgins,’ Marguerite Steen; ‘ The Georgian House,’ Frank Swmnerton; ‘A Long Time Ago,’ Margaret Kennedy; ‘ The Bridge,’ Naomi RoydeSmith; ‘ That Was Yesterday,’ Storm Jameson; ‘ Thank Heaven Fasting, E. M. Delafield; ‘ Secret Sentence,’ Vicki Baum; ‘ Ballerina,’ Lady Eleanor Smith; ‘ Boomerang,’ Helen Simpson; ‘ The Brothers,’ L. A. G. Strong; * Sontango,’ James Hilton; ‘ Little ‘ Red Horses,’ G. B. Stern; ‘ The Store,’ T.. S. Stribling; ‘ Invitation to the Waltz,’ Rosamond Lehmann; ‘To the North,’ -Elizabeth Bowen; ‘ The Narrow Corner/ Vf . Somerset Maugham; 1 Belinda Grove/ Helen Ashton; * Jenny Wren,’ E. H. Young; ‘ The Scornful Man,’ Muriel Hams; ‘ Marine Parade,’ Ivor Brown; ‘ Shadows on the Rock,’ Willa Gather; ‘ Men of Ness ’ Eric Linklater; ‘ She Was Sophia, Ruth Manning-Sanders; ‘I Have Been Young/ Elizabeth Lomond; Cold Comfort Farm,’ Stella Gibbins;’ ‘Fanfare for Tin Trumpets,’ Margery Sharp; Butler’s Gift,’ Martin Hare: ‘The Lost Generation,’ Ruth Holland; 4 Nymph Errant/ James Laver; * Snow on Water,’ Merle Eyles; ‘ His Imported Wife,’ Beryl Clarke. OLD BRIGADE AND THE NEW. : At the head’stands ‘The Fountain,’ by Mr Charles Morgan, given this place in the arbitary assertion that it is the best novel produced in the year. The story is concerned with- British officers interned in Holland during the war. It was published early in the spring, but nothing has since appeared to surpass it.

Then follow the masters whose _ books are accepted on trust by the faithful, though not always read without qualms of disloyal uneasiness. With ‘ Inheritance ’ comes a long company of the good and the competent, some of them almost untried craftsmen and some of them well set and familiar. Mr Galsworthy has embarked on another saga, and ‘ Flowering Wilderness ’ carries on the love affairs of Dinny Charwell to the chorus of Fleur and other familiar friends. ‘ Faraway ’ is also good Priestley, though it falls behind ‘ Angel Pavement ’ and is too long for the matter it contains. The same fault might be found with ‘ The Fortress,’ and most people would feel more cheerful about the fourth in Mr Walpole’s series if he had allowed Judith Paris to die at the end of this one. To let a character, even one so vital as Judith, live to the age of a hundred is rather to strain her welcome. Miss Hose Macaulay has abandoned her gay and cynical digs at modern times and gone back to Herrick and the Civil War. ‘ The House Tinder the Water describes the building of the Birmingham waterworks in a Welsh valley. It has the high merit of being thoroughly interesting all the way through. Mr Aldous Huxley has the same quality from an entirely different angle. His ‘ Brave New World ’ stands out as one- of the novels of the year which linger persistently in the reader s memory. The three next on the list earned their authors on a sudden and meteor flight into the ranks of the best sellers. ‘ Without My Cloak ’ is a first novel which scarcely shows any of the faults of inexperience. Miss Phyllis Bentley s careful and excellent study of a \orkshire family stands far above the ordinary level of fiction, and Magnolia Street,’ with its Jews on one side and its Gentiles on the other, is a hook of abounding life and freshness. that these three should have been so suc-cessful-all of them long and none without thought and some tragedymight be taken as a sign that t.. 0 popular taste in fiction is improving Miss Margaret Irwin follows with the ambitious ‘ Royal Flush ’—a story of the exiled Stuarts after the execution ot Charles I. Historical novels have been popular this year. ‘ Royal Flush touches the high-water mark ot their quality. It is vivid, beautifully written, interesting from the first appearance of Minette as a small child to her death as the wife of the degenerate Monsieur. , , Miss Elizabeth Lomond opens a little group of young experimenters whose efforts are "perhaps the most interesting in tho whole selection. They have all made good beginnings, and anything they may do in the future should be worth watching. NOVELS OF SIGNIFICANCE. Of the novels whose names are given it is only possible to mention a few, with the assurance that the rest are all good of their kind and can be recommended to anyone who has chanced to miss them. A more or less random glance at the list lights on some which have a definite significance. There is, for instance, ‘ Boomerang,’ by Helen Simpson, which is thick with incident and colour, and worth dll the time that is spent in reading it. ‘ Tho Brothers ’ is another notable book. It has a kind of Old Testament starkness of tragedy, spread with much more art than there is in the unrelieved gloom of Mr A. J. Cronin’s 1 Three Loves.’ ‘ Sons ’ is a sequel to ‘ The Good Earth,’ and carries on the story of the sons of Wang. ‘ Family History ’ is Jess directly a sequel to ‘ Tho Edwardians,’ and a much less interesting novel—partly, perhaps, because stories of the moneyed classes seem to have a certain artificiality in these times. People who are hungry must find little pleasure in the descriptions of the Lord Mayor’s banquet, and tho ordinary reader is apt to find his sympathy with Miss Sackville West's heroine alienated by her heedless buying of clothes, her pearls, her cars, her son at Eton. On the other side of the scale is Miss Marguerite Steen’s tender story of Liverpool slum life, ‘ Wise and Foolish Virgins.’ With ‘ She Was Sophia,’ it ranks as the best child study of the year. ‘ Little Red Horses,’ also about children, is affected and unreal beside these two. Mr Ivor Brown’s clever picture of the English seaside scene, observed by an American whose roots lie there, is one of the notable hooks; another is ‘ Queer Street,' by Edward Shanks. In ‘ A Long Time Ago,’ Miss Margaret Kennedy still misses the peak on which ‘ The Constant Nymph ’ triumphantly rests,' but it is unfair, though almost inevitable, to measure all her later books by this standard. Mr James Hilton is a novelist who trics_ experiments, and ‘ Contango ' is an interesting round-robin of effects touching isolated people in different parts of _ the world. ‘ Evensong ’ and ‘ Ballerina ’ both deal with the decay of groat artists, and * Thank Heaven Fasting ’ with the society marriage market of the prewar years. Miss Vicki Baum has produced two novels this year, and ‘ Secret Sentence ’ has been given a place for its sincerity and its unusual theme. OTHERS WORTH ATTENTION,

Most people have greeted ‘ I Have Been Young,’ by Elizabeth Lomond, as a first novel, but there is strong internal evidence that the author of < Margaret Protests,’ published some years ago, does not share in this belief. It is a gloomy and interesting study of drunkenness, sex, and poverty. The younger writers incline to cheerfulness, pleasantly blended with cynicism. ‘ Fanfaie for Tin Trumpets ’ is, indeed, gay. The best things in it are the characters of Ma Parker and Winnie, and the opening description of the man who shut himself up in his room to study Arabic and was found after his death to have an immense library of detective novels. In ‘ Nymph Errant ’ Mr James Laver handles impropriety delicately, and has produced a fantasia which is as improbable as it is entertaining. ‘ Cold. Comfort Farm ’ burlesques the Sussex school of novelists, arid is an enchanting blend of dialest, sweat, the dark forces of Nature, and the bovine peasant. ‘ Snow on Water ’ goes bravely to Finland, and is a book of astonishing maturity. So, too, is ‘ The Lost Generation,’ Miss Holland’s second effort. Martin Hare, who is apparently a woman, has many good qualities, and ‘ Butler’s Gift ’ is a most readable story of a ramshackle Irish family in the days of ambushes and terrors. ‘ His Imported Wife ’ offers a new aspect of the Anglo-American marriage. All these novels are worth attention, not only for thir own sake, but in the light of what their authors may do next time.