BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 69, 18 February 1939, Page 6

BOOK NOTES

: “THE PYRENEES.” ” (J. ]3. Morton). —Here vo have Beachcomber” deserting his daily jesting and his historical research to hark back l'n the mode of felloe,- to an adventure across the iyrfenees when he was a young man. Mr Morton started from the Mediterranean end of the. long mountain chain and walked across the ranges to the Atlantic; in fact, lie began his hike at the Rousilloh and went up aud down valleys and passes, now in •rrcnch territory, now in . Spanish, sleeping rough and treating all weather alike.” He crossed the Carlitte Mountams and came to Andora, where the Catalans have their headquarters, and where he found a dead man in a fastness.

Here is Morton, the preacher: ‘‘Mud for, mud, I prefer the honest mud of the peasant to the stinking stuff, in vhich the usurers are already stuck so fast. Cod be praised, they are up to the fetlocks in it. ... Why should we, nith all our cowardice and selfishness and cruelty, find beauty in hills and fields and woods? Why should they ie«m hideous to us P Because we have hqt lost irreparably our heritage.” Since Morton is no mean descriptive writer, hear this: ‘‘Presently, when you have passed the gorge of Anscrall, with its great red rocks, the river turns westwards, and you lose it. Another mile and you enter the Segre valley and the dark and ancient town of Urgel. It is a town to savour slowly. Walk about the dim, arcaded streets, and you will learn more of Spain than any printed words will ever convey. . , You will understand that C|iiality of ..hardness, that touch of steel in a people superficially lazy, and also a sadness which a pagan, hearing them sing, might mistake for despair.” The history of the country, the trouble with the Islamic Moors, the dangers of this mountain range—these are all here, together with many a

good yarn, much ouiet musing, abundant humour, and several little adventures that have etched themselves ®n the author’s mind.

“ACE HIGH.” "Ace High” (G. March-Phillips).— - On the surface this appears to he a novel in which the main appeal would be to readers interested in things horsey. Actually this is not so; while there is a great deal about steeplechasing in the story the author’s mam preoccupation is, first, his major chataeter, restless, reckless John Sprako; and, second, two slightly subsidiary figures, Vivienne Day and old Liverpool Shem, whose ambition it i§ to win a Grand National. The author’s handling of his characters is excellent. The slow transformation of Sprake from a wild, rootless, self-centred Indian Army

officer into a mature man with a feeling of obligation towards himself and others is splendidly handled. Vivienne and Liverpool Shem arc no less convincing. ; , ‘‘THE YEARLING.” • ‘‘The 'Yearling” (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; Heinemann).—The writer who can hold the reader’s interest for four hundred pages without resorting to any of the tricks of the modern novelist's trade has something which is rarely to be found in present-day fiction. In Miss Rawlings’s story of a poverty-stricken family, wresting a precarious living from tho reluctant soil of inland Flordia, ono is confronted with a series of. moral, spiritual, and physical problems, which, though they never intrude, can always bo sensed beneath the surface of the natural setting.

The time-span covers the thirteenth year of Jody’s life. His father, Penny Baxter, a small man of immense courage and vitality, has driven himself mercilessly in his struggle against droughts, floods, and other disasters. His stout, hard-working wife has horn him several children, but. Jody alone survives—the child of tlieir middle-age. She is a shrewd, harsh woman, incapable of sensing tho boy’s loneliness, impatient with her husband’s leniency towards his adolescence. Tho adoption of tho baby fawn, whose mother loses her life in an epic struggle for Penny’s own survival, is the first climax in the story. Thoso who read of the lonely boy’s devotion to his pet and of tho subsequent, inevitable tragedy will not remain unmoved. In her handing of Flag's death the author reaches a High level of artistry, and, by a curiously isolated piece of economic writing, maintains a fine emotional tension. Interwoven with tho romance of . Jody and his fawn are stirring tales of the swash-buckling Forrester brothers, of Christmas festivities with a dramatic sequel, of a sailor homo from the China Seas, of mighty huntings and fierce jungle deaths.

‘‘PRECIOUS COMPANY.” “Precious Company” (Jackson Bndd). —Jewels belonging to the lato lamented Russian Royal family have inspired a great deal of post-1918 fiction, but of all the exciting or wouldbe exciting novels in which they have figured few can have contained so much excitement as does this one hv Jackson Budd. The story rests on old and tried mechanics—a king’s ransom in jewels; diamond cut diamond in the under-world, u young English engineer who quite innocontly becomes possessor of the loot and so involved in a whirlpool of danger and thrills. But to give Mr Budd his due, he has made the best of his mechanics.