SOME NEW NOVELS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19762, 8 October 1927, Page 7 (Supplement)

SOME NEW NOVELS.

"THE RIM OF THE BOWL." > " The Rim of the Bowl." by George Bickerstaff (Benn). " Race/' by Mary Grace Ashton {Murray). " The Natural State," by Dennis Bradley (Werner Laurie). " The Eternal Fast," by G. F. Bradby (Constable). I sat 'mid the flickering lights when all the guests had departed. Alone at the head of the table and dreamed of the days that were gone; Neither asleep nor v/aking, nor sad nor cheery-hearted— But passive as a leaf by the wild Novem ber blown. I thought—if thinking 'twere when thoughts were dimmer thnn shadows. And toyed the while with the music I drew from the rim of the _ bowl. Passing my fingers round; as if my will compelled it To answer by shapeless dreams as a soul might answer soul. From the phrase in this poem George Bickerstaff takes the title (or his collection of portrait sketches, this " old man's book of characters." It is well-named; there is a shadowy music in the telling of these tale's that "recalls the thin, sweet note of the crystal—a note as alien to the present day as the music of the glasses is remote from the blare of the saxophone. Belated Victorians who do not love the saxophone will appreciate " The Rim of the Bowl." ' Race" is an ambitious and, to a targe extent, successful first novel dealing with the tragedy of mixed marriages—the mixture in this particular instance "being that of Roman Catholic and Jew. Solomon Schenstcin, a millionaire merchant, has married at the age of forty a beautiful young girl of a well-born Catholic family who, coming from a shiftless home where the constant menace of poverty had ruined her mother's health and nerves, was tempted into an alliance which soon proved a ghastly mistake. L'he essential and fundamental dissimilarity between Jew and Christian, a difference not so much religious as racial, resulted in a kind of silent warfare between husband and wife over the spiritual possession of Ivan, the only child of their loveless union. Ihe sense of family, of continuity, which dom inates the Jewish mind makes the father long to see his son safely tied down hy a Jewish marriage, while his wife works as steadily though silently to thwart his schemes. Ivan irresponsible, unprincip led, selfish, yet warm-hearted and lovable, is excellently drawn, though the sudden ness of his " conversion" hardly carries conviction. With the death of his beauti ful but unhappy mother some of the in terest of the story evaporates, yet enough remains to make the book a very notable first novel and to rouse the expectation of even greater successes to come. Mr. Dennis Bradley is a famous writer. He says so himself —(Con Delaney being obviously an alias for the author) and like Shakespeare's braggart, he " cares not who ~ knows it." To a writer so great grammar is presumably a slave and not a master, yet " Let you and I take a glass together," strikes "strangely on ears attuned to the demands of a less | elastic syntax, while it is surprising that one on such easy terms with the nobility and gentry should talk of " Lord William Radstock, first son of the Earl of Silverton." 'However, these are minor blemishes. " The Natural State is a play, preceded by a long character-sketch of each of the dramatis personae. The scene is laid in Con Delaney s country home, where are gathered together a goodly collection of beautiful ladies with their attendant swains. At dinner. Ming Fung, the Chinese major domo, serves a wine containing a rare drug which has the effect of . revealing the essential ego in everyone who tastes it, and of thus exhibiting humanity in a " natural state." Frankly the change is negligible. As Browning might have said of the modern woman's dress —" the little less and how slight is the difference." Mr. Bradley's book will no doubt enjoy a wide sale, and will pass for profound philosophy with those who prefer the twopence-col >ured variety. Rupert Brooke, in one of his sonnets, speak 3 of "swimmers into cleanness leaping" and this is the exact figure that occurs to the reader who passes from "The Natural State" to " The Eternal Past." This is a poignant little story of youthful love in a setting of summer by the Corn ish sea—a love that never flowered and that yet remained with the boy a posses sion for ever, past and present merged in an eternal unity. Through the perils that surround such a theme the author steers a true course as though serenely un aware of the danger of mawkish sentimen tality on the one hand and Freudian unpleasantness on the other. " Mr. G. F. Bradby," says his publisher, writes, if the expression be pi rnissible, like an English meadow," anil, in that happy simile is stated no more and no less than the truth.