NEW NOVELS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20088, 27 October 1928, Page 9 (Supplement)

NEW NOVELS.

AN UNRELATED TRIO.

"The Partridge." by Elizabeth Murray (Tho Bodlcy ETo.id). "Tho Three Cousins" by Geoffrey Mobs (Hutchinson).

"Black Sleeves" by Mrs. C. N. Williamson (Chapman Hall). " Charm ? It's like tho bloom on a woman. If you have ifc nothing else matters—not even education. . And if you haven't got it, it doesn't much matter what elso you do have." Novelists, appreciating tho truth of Barrie's dictum, are often at much pains to impress upon readers tho charm of their heroines. But it is seldom they aro as successful in capturing that elusivo quality as Miss Elizabeth Murray proves herself in "Tho Partridge." Tho curious titlo from Ecclesiasticus, " Like as a partridge taken and kept in a cage so is tho hoart of tho proud," is the only weak thing about this extraordinarily human and moving story. Yet lifelike as most of tho characters are, they aro mere shadows compared with the central figure, Josephino. One of those women who seem inado to inspire passionate lovo in men and women alike, she is, for all her gay beauty, somehow a tragic figure doomed to bo the victim of her own power of fascination. Her creator should go far.

" The Throe Cousins " is a book of short stories by that popular writer Geoffrey Moss, author of " Now Wine," and "Whipped Cream." All the stories are eminently readable and many contain stray bits of wisdom like that in " Grocers' Grapes": There's been nothing to change mo except time, and that never does. It makes one bud, bloom and wither; it makes one grow, it makes 0110 die: it doesn't change me." But tho pick of tho bunch is tho story which gives the title to tho book, a subtle and profound study of racial temperament, Englishman, Norwegian and German. Hugh Wade and tho German Gveifswald. both fmo fellows, are thrown into ono another's company in tho narrow quarters of their cousin Andorson's sailing yacht, and their reactions to one another's personality explains better than many a lengthy dissertation tho comic yet_ sad results of mutual racial incomprehension.

"Black Sleeves" is written by Mrs. C. N. Williamson and has for its sub-titlo "It Happened in Hollywood." Littlo more need bo said about this book except that it contains all tho ingredients for a typical scenario complete even to a sinister villain named Marco Lopqz. Tho ingredients of the crowded plot not only happened in Hollywood but they could not uossibly have" happened anywhere else—nowhere for instance, in tho world of real, as distinguished from reel, life.