A BRILLIANT NOVEL.
\ BY MARGOT'S DAUGHTER. " The Fir and the Palm" (Hutchinson) Princess Bibesco's first full-length novel would be a better book if it were not so fatiguingly brilliant. , The personality of the author, arrogant and ruthless, as her mother's daughter could hardly fail to be, is always felt intrading itself between the reader and the characters of the novel. • {, ; • Yet, this study of two opposing types of manhood, the sunny self-indulgent Palm and the Fir, hiding its fiery, heart under a cloak of snow is finely conceived and finely executed.. ■
The scene is set in the rarefied atmosphere of " high society," of the world where one amuses oneself (often, apparently, with difficulty); and if the emotions and miseries . of these favourites of fortune seem to busy, practical New Zealanders v a trifle flimsy and unreal that is not to say that the portrait is a false one. Lady Horsham, mother of the "Fir," is a genuinely (though unconsciously) 'amusing character, a kind of . super-platitu-
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18711, 17 May 1924, Page 22 (Supplement)
Word Count
165A BRILLIANT NOVEL. New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18711, 17 May 1924, Page 22 (Supplement)
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