BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 229, 27 August 1932, Page 9

BOOK NOTES

NEW ENGLAND SUMMER. Booth Tarkington has found the material for his “Mary’s Neck” in one of the New England seaside villages, at which Americans are apr to spend the summer months. In a recent novel, “Mirthful Haven,” he gave a much more satisfactory account of this coastal region, and most people will prefer its more universal application to the purely local interests of “Mary’s Neck.” The villagers are those taciturn; aloof creatures, who strike fear into the hearts of their sociable fellow-countrymen from the cities. They heartily despise the summer visitors. Old Lingle, for instance, was one day asked by his neighbour, Mrs Cadwalader, why he had stood by and watched her son drown. “Mrs Cadwalader,” he explained, “you’ll have to excuse me; I thought it was one o’ them summer people. And Mrs Cadwalader, so deep was her contempt for the summer invaders, apparently considered his excuse perfectly adequate.

Among the summer visitors is a Middle West business man and Ins family, the Masseys, all of them ecstatic at the “quaintness” of the village, and eager to find a place in local society. Mr Tarkington enjoys some quiet fun at the expense of the Masseys, especially as Mr Massey is shamefully bullied by his wile am? daughters, and deemed by them a handicap to their social aspirations. But he is frankly ironical when lie deals with the other visitors, and makes the mistake of treating them as types rather than as fully-develop-ed characters. His New England villagers are worth meeting, but, on the whole, Mr Turkiiigton seems to have exhausted the possibilities of this summer paradise, as far as readers outside America are concerned.

VIKING DAYS IN BRITAIN. Northern Britain in the ninth century is the scene of Edward Frankland’s Viking novel, “Huge as Sin. As a picture of the times it is a striking work and thoroughly convincing, lor the author has obviously studied such evidence as exists ol the eailj English and invading Norsemen, interspersing fragments of triumphal songs and dirges, improvised in tne manner of the old sagas. It is unlortunate that Mr Franklaml feels impelled to slaughter so many of his characters just as they become familial.. Wholesale massacre was, however, a convention in Viking days, and the reader at least has the satisfaction of following the exploits of Thorolf the Norseman, and Tliora, his female counterpart, from the time of then landing in Wales to the end of their conquering career in Westmoreland. 'The instinctive hostility existing between Vikings and the native defenders of Westmoreland gives a touch of comic relief to this warlike tale. The latter feared and hated “these blue-eyed vermin, detestable off-scour-ings of the coasts and isles, ignorant, blood-thirsty heathen, cold and cruel as the sea of which they fared. lhe Vikings, on the other hand, cons-d----ered the English “stubborn and stupid,” and marvelled at their candid disinclination to take even an occasional bath. Mr Frankland naturally shows a partiality tor Ins hygemc Norsemen, and such happy, healthy barbarians as Thorolf and Tliora are ancestors of whom modern Britons may' well be proud. LAUGHETIt AND SONG. The laughter of which Sax Rohmer speaks so oiten in “\ u’an Ilee See Laughs” is described as “a very high sound, between a piping and a squeak, higher than the note of a rat.” It is the sinister accompaniment to all Yp’an lice See’s crimes in London, France, Egypt, and Arabia, whether he is superintending the slaying of a Scotland Yard detective in Lunehouse or the abduction of a girl at Alexandria. Mr Rohmer increases the number of his horrors as the story speeds along. His inventiveness is quite as remarkable here as in the Fu Manchu tales. . , , The super-criminal of Virgil Markham’s “Song of Doom” prefers songs to laughter when he wishes to celebrate a fresh murder. This story, like Mr Rohmer’s, is an essay in the macabre, with a series of horrible events on a trans-European express as its climax, and an American opera singer as its heroine. Mr Markham is ingenious, but his use of somewhat obscure American idiom can bo trying at times. AN OPEN-AIR ROMANCE. “The Coast Road,” by Madeleine C. Munday, is described as a “red-blood-ed open-air story,” but it is fur from being the frivolous affair that such novels usually are. Miss Munday lias introduced some very attractive characters, and added knowledgeable descriptions of such places as the Channel Islands, the Riviera, i>rovincial England, and Shanghai. One is therefore the more prepared to accept her account of Maddnlena Bianclii’s improbable girlhood among Corsican brigands, and her wild adventures until chance brought succour in the guise of Paul Westering, a young English scientist. It is with Maddalena’s children, Con and Jacqueline, that Miss Munday is chiefly concerned. Their days are happily spent in one of the Channel Islands —probably Jersey—which they forsake for a grim North of England town, there to pursue their studies at the local university. Both of them eventually find their way to the East, and this part of their story, together with the halfironic description of provincial university life, is capitally managed by Miss Munday. If this is her first novel—as seenis probable —it is unusually well written, and she displays a happy talent for portraiture. One is grateful, too, for the restraint of her Shanghai pages, which reproduce the glamour of that city without recourse to melodrama or spurious aid to “atmosphere.”

“BULL-DOG” DRUMMOND RETURNS.

“The Return of Bull-Dog Drummond” revives a genial personality, whose unique adventures, by grace of “Sapper,” have given pleasure to thousands. It is pleasant to meet Drummond again, even though lie is decidedly older, and lacks much of liis pristine buoyancy and engaging wit. During the years that have passed since “Sapper” firmly launched him, other writers have been swift to offer imitations, and variations, so that Drummond, his ebullience and his resourcefulness, are no longer novelties in fiction, and several competitors have outdone the “Bulldog” at his own particular game. Nevertheless, it is agreeable to attach oneyelf to so keen-witted an amateur sleuth in this new story, and follow his complicated but very sound theories to tho inevitable conclusion. Drummond rejoices to find himself pitted against a galaxy of criminal talent, especially as the memorable Irma has decided on this occasion to pay off some heavy scores. He proves once again that this astute woman was accurate when she remarked that “Drummond is not such a fool as he looks.”