"CLEM.”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XV, Issue 167, 20 June 1925, Page 9

"CLEM.”

(By I

Erica Maxwell).

The story of Clem is laid in Australia. mainly in Queensland, and for this reason, if for no other. Erica Maxwell’s latest novel will be appreciated by renders in the Southern Pacific. The average British reader too, will find it a pleasant experience to have a book in hand in which pioneer life in other places than Western States is made the subject of romance. Love is its main theme and it is of the kind that does not run smoothly. But then, if it did, it would not be worth reading. There are two heroines. Clem, the step-daughter of a rough and uncouth railway construction worker, and Helen, the daughter of an Australian ornithologist, who is residing with Helen for the time being, near bv a line being constructed in che interland of Queensland, his occupation there being to study the life habits of birds. Here Helen meets Phillip Masters, the resident civil engineer in charge of the railway construction. The pretty and innocent Clem falls to the affectionate advances of a young pay clerk in the pubtie works office, and Phillip, discovering him to be a rotter gives him a thrashing and dismissal. Tn revenge, the pay clerk spreads a very different story to the real cause of his dismissal, and y Maociates the name of Phillip with the same scandal regarding Clem. In the meanwhile a young worker in the camp vainly wooes the unhappy Clem, and believing the lies told about Phillip vows he will take the latter’s life for the injury he has done the Rirl. Phillip, unaware that his name has been linked up with this affair, makes excellent progress towards winning Helen’s affection, but on the day he decided to declare his love, Helen learns of, and is forced to believe. the false tales circulated about him. Broken-hearted she sees him no more and shortly afterwards returns to Melbourne with her father. Here she again meets Clem who has travelled to the citv to find her false lover, still

believing that he loves her and will keep his promise to marrv her. Clem tolls her story to Helen, who learns for the first time that it is her own

brother who under an assumed name as pay clerk betraved the prettv dem. Helen is filled with remorse for her lack of faith in her lover, but all comes right when bv chance she meets Phillip a few w»< k> later. The storv has a few weak periods, but these are rare and heing soon passed over, the reader’s interest quicklv revives in the brightly told love romance of dean liv-

ing men and women. The moral tone of the hook ig excellent and only healthy emotions are stirred hv reading its na<?es. —Hodder and Stoughton, publishers.

(By Concordia Merrel). The scene is laid in London, Hetty Carrol, the daughter of a brainless selfcentred father, has, since her mother’s death, been the slave of the household, striving to make both ends meet, and provide her young sister with reasonable comfort during her school days. Then enters a stepmother who quickly dispels what little happiness there was in the girl’s work by changing the whole atmosphere of the home by her presence and methods. The inevitable quarrels follow, and Hetty one night, after telling the intruder some plain truths, finds herself homeless in the great city. The story really commences here for it is the struggles, the short-lived successes, temptations, the almost overwhelming difficulties that confront so many girh so placed, that are made the personal incidents in the life of Hetty Carrol, and make the book worth reading.

Btrongwilled and ambitious, yet never departing from the straight path, her attractive personality wins to her the right class of men friends, and little by little she climbs the ladder from cloak gill at a cabaret to a good position on the literary staff of a women’s journal. The interviewing work in connection with this occupation brings her into ac quaintance with Alan Dacres. the younger son of a younger son of someone high in the social scale. In her engagement to him, Hetty is happy in the realisation of her great ambition to win her place in the social world, but selfanalysation reveals to her the absence in her heart ofthelove every womwn should bring to the man she is to marfy. so she breaks with Allan and sacrifices her ambition on the altar of principle. Later true happiness comes to her froty the hands of a boy friend of her childhood who by hard w’ork and constant ajjplication has won fame and wealth a.< an architect and town planner. The

authoress has touched life as it is without soiling her pen, even in the difficult passages which make clear the dangers that surrounded the lives of unpro tected girls in the great citiek. —Pub.: Hodder and Stoughton.

“JULIE CANE.’’ (Harvey O’Higgins.’’

Mr Harvey 6’Higgins is the authot of two remarkable volumes of short stories, “From the Life’’ and “Some Distinguished Americans.*’ “Julie Cane’’ is the story of a girl whose father was an unsuccessful grocer, a queer, shabby, eccentric llttie man, but a man of vision none the less. Taking Julie’s education in hand from the first, he developed in her an extraordinary self-confidence amt sense of aristocratic superiority which took her triumphantly through her childhood, won her passionate love of the spoiled and headstrong Alan Birdsall, the fin ally gave her the strength of character to fight desperately free of him and gain the mastery of her own life.—Published by Jonathan Cape. Price 6/-.

“LIFE BEGINS TOMORROW.”

(Guido Da Verona.) This great novel has reached its twenty-fifth Italian edition. It is tho story of an over-mastering Love Pas-

sion that leads to a crime. But in these circumstances are we sure that it is a

crime, the hastening of the inevitable death of the sick husband Giorgio by his intimate friend the great scientist, Dr. Anrea Ferouto? And further arc we sure that it was Dr. Feronto who did yield to temptation.’ With a mastc’s hand Guido Da Vernoa draws an intimate picture of Italian family life, of the spell that the beautiful Novello throws over Dr. Feronto; of the husbands suffering and death and of the public scandal and the trial that thrill all Italy. What lies behind the ver diet and Dr Feronto’s acquitcal ’--Published by Jonathan Cape. Price 6/--

THE GREAT WORLD.”

(Bv a Gentleman uith a Duster.) ‘•The Great World” is a brilliant lovel running to about 100.(MX) words, (| English life, dealing with three hikes in succession—grandfather, son ind grandson. The period is the last ;yyl shows with extraordinary insight the trend of events eading up to the present day. Ihe first book deals with the old Duke and iis heir. The second book deals with he Duke’s son and ends at the period if the South African war. The third mok is Great Britain to-day, and is most striking. The novel is written ivith a purpose, and endeavours to diow how the political and socijil history of the past is interwoven with the things of the present, and gives the reader an idea how our presentday condition., have arisen. "The Great World” is in many ways a really beautiful novel hy a writer of extraordinary ability. Its publisher say it will mo i probablj lx.- tho bi«» micoass ut 1925.