Review.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8072, 24 August 1905, Page 8

Review.

Patmos: By Kathleen Irislewood. (Loudon: Gordon and Gott-.li).

Novels of New Zealand' life are still so few and far between that it is with a pleasurable feeling of anticipation wc take up any new attempt in this direction. In the. present case, however, a very few pages sufficedto show that not amusement, but instruction, was the author's aim ; and that " Patmos," instead of being a novel, was a serious effort in the cause of Temperance—an attempt " to tell the story of the advance of Prohibition in New-Zealand." Since the authoress writes as a partisan, the book has no claim to be considered a work of art at all. The characters are either inhumanly great and good or base beyond redemption. Even in their personal appearance the same marked distinction is drawn. Kelly, the licensee of the Star of Australasia Hotel, is " a man with a low forehead, ancl the muscular development of a human bulldog " ; while the Prohibition hero, John Saxon, lias a small head and wellcut features, with a look of refinement that spiritualizes them—" the face of a student with the eyes of a commander." We recognise the hero and the villain of melodrama. From the nature of the case, the-outlook on life is'of. the narrowest, the sense of humour is entirely absent, and the story depends for its interest on the piling up of horrors, all attributed to the wicked liquor traffic, with a cheerful disregard for the doctrine of plurality, of causes that must astonish an unbiassed reader. There are not.wanting signs of literary talent in the book, the little love-story introduced is prettily told • but the writer's pre-occupation with her dreary subject^ the abundance of political detail, interviews with the Premier, Prohibitionist meetings, Local Option Polliug, " Brave little Clutha," etc.; and the want of all sense of proportion which makes her compare a Prohibition orator suffering from brain-exhaustion to St. John the Divine in Patmos, all combine to put the book outside the pale of literature, whatever may be its merits as a party pamphlet. We must hope that ' Kathleen Inglewood' will some day attempt a subject in which her literary faculty is not so heavily handicapped. Of "'Patmos,' wc can only repeat the old verdict, " For those who like this sort of thing, this is ui-actly the sort of thing they will like."