Book Reviews

Hutt News, Volume 13, Issue 25, 29 November 1939, Page 2

Book Reviews

(By "Calliope.")

* f G. B. Stern's latest book, "Long Story Short" Is, as its v title implies, a collection of short stories. "Free Lance" tells of the efforts of a young journalist who conies under that category, and contain® a story within the story. ' "Saturday Afternoon" is a refreshingly different story under a somewhat hackneyed title, and goes to prove that a blistered heel may sometimes be more of a boon and a blessing than is commonly supposed. A high-spirited, wilful girl, a boy I who was going to write an opera, I and a seaside boardinghouse in the holiday season of 1912 constitute the opening pages of "Seaside Girl" The bitter-sweet ending is strangely satisfying. "Quality of Mercy" tells of a luncheon party in a London flat, and its far reaching consequences, which change the course of Several lives. What can happen when fertile im aginations seize upon a humble telephone book is shown in "She Never Told Her Love," a mer.ry mixup of fact and fiction. These 1 live stories have been selected at random from the eighteen well told tales this entertaining volume contains. Clever and amusing, it is a book to be recommended for light summer reading. Having spent his fortune in riotous living, Richard Farleigh, the hero of F. E. Mills Young's book, "The Lamp" came to take stock of himself and his material and immaterial assets, and found that, in accordance with certain regrettable traits in human nature those whom he had once looked upon as friends had vanished with his fortune. His beautiful girl friend, pleading that it would not be fair to ask her to live in married poverty, also left him, so he decided to go to South Africa to join his friend Joe Pen well on an ostrich farm, hoping to make a living and have , time and space in which to find himself again. He was not, however, destined to lead the quite simple life he had planned, his fatal attraction for women found scope even on the uouth African Veldt, and he quiciviy found himself vitally involved in the lives of many people in the country of his adoption. Despite the excellent human interest which the story contains, it is South Africa, that immense, rather terrifying country with all its ageles's problems of white versus black and of conqueror living and working witli conquered that dominates the book. "Everything has its appointed hour" says Leonardo Blake at the beginning of his book "Hitler's Last Year of Power," an astrological and psychological study oi European politics. This "appointed hour" certainly seems to be known to him. for the book foretold the exact date of the Palish crisis, the invasion of Poland, that Chamberlain would fight and Mussolini would disappoint Hitler, the German people's disaffection and rivalry among the Nazi leaders. The author traces the history of Germany back to 1871, the date of the unification of the German States and the foundation of the First Reich; which ended with the Kaiser's exile. The Second Reich was Republican Germany, and! Hitler's Germany is known as the Third Reich. The origin of National Socialism, Hitler's ambitions and rise to power, and the historic gathering in the Munich Beer Hall are dealt with, in fact a complete short history of the Third and greater Reich is given. World events are read from the stars in detail from the fateful September 1939 until the end of 19-10, when Hitler's downfall and death is predicted. This book is of vital interest and importance to those who place any faith at all in astrological predictions, as Mr. Blake claims that years of study have revealed the true face of the European situation to him, a claim which, is certainly justified by his past successes. Eileen Bigland, whose travelling companions are a typewriter and a sense of humour, has been to Central Africa, and brought back a book that is even more unusual tnan its predecessor, "Laughing Odyssey." In a London club, the authoress heard the story of the soldier who in 1911 stumbled upon beautiful Swiha Ngandu, "The Lake of the ' Royal Crocodiles." Fired by the story of how, after four pitiless years of warfare, he returned at last | to live in his lakeside paradise and I cultivate the lands with the assistance of native labourers, she decided to visit the lake and see its wonders for" herself. The lands across which she flew, the impressions she gained, the stop < ping places en route, the people she met and her travelling companions ' i on her four and a half day flight 1 from England are all described In a <

bright and entertaining style which makes excellent reading. I Upon reaching her destination she 1 finds a native community working in a paradise of natural beauty and |in perfect harmony with the farinI ing and other activities of her host i and his wife. She sees many unI lovely and sordid things during her journey, but it is the very happiness of this isolated community standing out in sharp contrast to the mistaken native policy of other white settlers that is the keynote of his outspoken but essentially optimistic book —"The Lake of the lioyal Crocodiles."