BOOK REVIEW

Hokitika Guardian, 30 March 1935, Page 2

BOOK REVIEW

“All Sails Set” (Isabel Hopestill Carter): It was sixty year s ago that Tom Brown, captain of an ocean-go-ing sailing ‘-ship, (returned to his native harbour and married Elizabeth Sparrow. Three weeks later they went, to sea together. The. day-to-day chronicle of the life of tlm skipper’s wife, the ship in full sail with Tom driving it the last inch, storms at sea, the men in the rigging like black dots being blown against tbe sky, strange harbours and strange hinds, the mate and the crew, and then the children mnl the shipwreck and the new com* mnnd—such is the book. Freshened by the breath of the sea which to-day may be quiet and smooth, and to-morrow lashed into a fury of spray bringing danger and the hint of lurking tragedy the story is refreshing, original, and true.

“Nursing Home” (Peter Delius): From the moment when Constable • Jerkin looms out. of the fog in a London street, until that moment, three days later, when the sun emerges for the first time, a ball ol fire in a Lonthinning mist, the lives and fates of the characters in this Nursing Home bold ns. Lieutenant-Commander Murdoch, lift-man and porter, Nurse Fitzhoi'hort, married to the supremest of cads, gay and beautiful Pamela, Hen- I ry Scatter, surgeon and self-made man, I flip hypeoehondriae and bulky Mrs Allen," and the General, hating life as much as he hates women, and longing for release from both—those are the | characters, the lines of whose fate intersect in the Nursing Home. The story is not one of pain, though pain is necessarily part of the background, • nor is it tragic, except insofar as the ) end of life itself is tragic. Romantic ; it is, for it tells of love and courage, j “1, James Whittaker ’ (James M hittaker): This is the stark story of life, j i Yet all it* grimness and horror cannot j kill the constant beauty which comes ■ when courage and suffering combine, j even on the most sordid battle-ground, i It i s a story of adventure—adventure j quite as exciting as, and in many re- j spects more dangerous than any in the j jungle lor the jungle docs not imperil | the. soul. In many ways it is a book of triumph. The author, despite all i the pain, and misery lie has known, depsite the dirt, the greed, the cruelty, the lark of opportunity and tile constant ill-luck, rises again and again, swallows his defeat and renews hi.s battle of knowledge. His love and pursuit of beauty, the education lie has had, added to the one he has given himself at such an appalling cost, have given him an admirable facility for self-expression. Three of H. G. Wells’ recent hooks worth reading axie ‘“The. Bulpington of Blup,” The Snape of Things to Come,” and “Wealth and Happiness of Mankind.” Wells is the most eager, the most passionate, the most persistently articulate of the something* ought-to-be-done geniuses. From the day when he hurst into ori e of the meetings of the Fabian Society demanding that something he done about unmarried motherhood in England and Bernard Shaw dryly asked: “For instance what?” Wells has had tile air and the conviction of putting his finger right on the spot of the trouble, and ask s the world why something wasn’t done about it. Wells recently compared his brain with the brains of F»in stein, Shaw, Llovd George and L Julian Huxley, after which he came to the modest conclusion that hi.s was just an everyday type of lvrain, and

ho even enumerated its defects. Nevertheless, it must be said that, with its limitations, bis brain has done extremely well, winning for him international fairip and impressing his personality and his wav of thinking upon a generation.