THE NOVELS OF LAST YEAR

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3256, 28 January 1926, Page 10

THE NOVELS OF LAST YEAR

MR WALPOLE’S COMMENTS. In the course of an interesting article in ‘John o’ Loudon's Weekly’ Mr Hugh Walpole writes: — One of the really striking features in the condition of the modern novel is that there is a gulf fixed between the novels road by the general reading public and the novels read by the intelligentsia that has never to the same extent been so before. There is a new form of the English novel, provocative, intersting, original, but at present almost unintelligible to the general reader of novels. But perhaps X shall emphasise more clearly what I moan if I try and make a list of the twenty-five novels of the year unit seem to me to have aroused the most interest in different reading circles. The list is as follows; —

1. ‘Suspense’ (Joseph Conrad). 2. ‘Christina Alberta’s Father” (H, G. Wells). 3. ‘The Great Pandolfo’ (W. J, Locke).

4. ‘One Increasing Purpose’ (A. S. M. Hutchinson). 5. ‘Love’ (Elizabeth Kussell). 6. ‘The Painted Veil’ (W. Somerset Maugham). 7. ‘The George' and ‘The Crown’ (Sheila Kaye-Smith). 8. ‘The Elder Sister’ (Frank Swinnerton).

9. ‘The Unchanging Quest’ (Sir Philip Gibbs). 10. ‘The Chip and the Block’ (E. M. Delafleld). 11. ‘Sea Horses’ (Francis Brett Young). 12. ‘Sorrell and Son’ (Warwick Deeping). 13. ‘Queen’s Folly (Stanley Weyman). 14. ‘William’ (E. H. Young). 15. ‘St. Mawr’ (D. H. Lawrence). 16. ‘Mrs Dalloway’ (Virginia Woolf). 17. ‘The Sailor's Return’ (David Garnett). 18. ‘Barren Leaves’ (Aldous Huxley). 19. ‘No More Parades’ (Ford Madox Ford).

20. ‘The Polyglots’ (Gerhardi). 21V ‘The Informer’ (Liam O’Flahearty). 22. ‘The Day of Atonement’ (Louis Golding), 23. ‘Harvest in Poland’ (Geoffrey Dennis).

24. ’Mary Glenn’ (Sarah Gertrude MJllin).

25. ‘Cloud Cuckooland’ (Naomi Mitchison).

Now, of course. It is obvious that there are very many good novels omitted from this list, novels as good as some of those named here, but the list very well serves my purpose. The first fourteen novels may be said in the: test sense of the word to be popular; that is, they are novels with a certain considerable circulation, they are all by authors very generally known, and they do for the most par follow the old tradition of the .hovel — they tell stories, they create characters external to the author, and they are easily to be understood. As a matter of fact, with four possible exceptions they might be read in any circle of Intelligentsia, without shame or shyness; but the other eleven are all, I believe, with the exception of Mr Huxley, by others with at present small publics, and five of six of them are admirable examples of what the new novel in England is trying to do. Speaking in general about this list, there is no novel by Mr Galsworthy. Mr Ih nnett. Mr E. M. Forster, Miss May Sinclair, Miss Stella Benson, but otherwise, now that Mr Hardy, Mr Kipling, Mr George Moore have ceas ed to write novels, it is, I think pretty representative. Once again I must ‘emphasise the obvious fact that there are novels that I have not in my own reading encountered or have happened not to hear discussed by my friends land T must apologise for their omission.

In this list there is, in my opinion. one novel of absolute genius (and b£ course, this list is merely indivdual Lad never dogmatc). ‘Suspense’ has ,een very differently reviewed, but it earns to me to have had the promike of being one of the very greatest cf Conrad’s books; its extraordinary ieative richness must, 1 should have thought have struck anybody who nad it. Although we have apparently' only about half of the intended romance, there are at least half a dozen : taracters who thrust themselves forward by their extraordinary vitality, Bikch standing separately creative, eich individual by himself, and one of two of them, the strange hysterica)

child, for instance, quite new Conrad and amazingly successful. Then the atmosphere of the book is astonishing; Napoleon’s personality hangs oter all of it, and we feel as we read, a strange alarm and uneasiness as though our own lives and fortunes depended on his mysterious movements.

If Thackeray or Dickens were alive to-day and were to read some of these bpoks they would be surprised, I fancy!, at the knowledge and discipline and honesty of most of them. They mjght sigh a little for their own freer apd more ebullient time, but what we have lost on the lone hand we are sulciy gaining on the other.