THE BOOKSHELF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20152, 12 January 1929, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSHELF.

3*H IE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE. HAWTHORNDEN PRIZE STORY. " Ihe Pathway," the Hawthorndcn prize story, by Henry Williamson, is a book composed of two seemingly dissonant parts. On the one side there is nn idyllic love story of peculiar delicacy set in a background of the perfect English countryside. On the other is a hero on wliom the shadow of Shelley lies heavily, 11 hero who spends much time in walking tours with young men of anarchic and blasphemous tendencies, who can best be described as " half-baked." Fortunately these ideas are purely theoretical. In practical life, William Maddison is the most understanding and gentle-minded of men. His love scenes with Mary Ogilvie ure Meredithian in their high idealism Few men novelists could have filled in the between spaces of life so intuitively. Almost at times the effect, though not the style is reminiscent of Katherinc Mansfield. Intimate little details are introduced with seeming irrelevance, ■nhich yet make the scenes wonderfully vivid and real. Even such a prosaic affair as washing-up becomes exciting as Mr. Williamson presents it. Best of all, perhaps, are the pictures of the scenes and customs of rural England. There are Ruddy Barum Wonder apples, and a Devonshire supper, and Sunday service in the village church, and an otter hunt, and a hunt ball, and rough tweeds and lurcher dogs. Mr. Williamson belongs to a generation which scorns a happy ending, otherwise there seems no reason for the tragedy at the close. It is a book which shows immaturity, but which contains passages of dclicato beauty. "Tho Pathway." by Henry Williams. _>n (Cape). A POWERFUL BOOK. - «' PORTRAIT OF A SPY." Mr. Temple Thurston's picture of Liane Sonrel in " Tho Portrait of a Spy " is an unusually vivid one. He shows her to be a woman of rich personality, fully conscious of the power of her beauty, and with all the sensitive perceptions of an instinctive artist. It says much for Mr. Thurston's technique that never once is Liane's talent questioned.

Tho book does not attempt to trace Lianc's lite. Some half-dozen impressions are all that we are given, but they are all quick with the gleam of her own particular genius. Sho is seen chiefly through tho eyes of one George Le Mesurier, an artist of distinction, who was for some years her lover. These glimpses are all sufficient, for the reader will agree that to be given exhaustive details, to know all that one's curiosity twists and turns to discover, would be to break through that cloud of mystery that must always surround the Lianes of this world. It has been said that it is not life that matters, but the courage one brings to it. It is, perhaps, this quality of cour age that gives Liane Sonrel her power. For the impression deepest in one's mind on finishing the book is that of supremo courage. One sees Liane, doubly appealing in her loveliness, and utter loneliness, head high, and with, perhaps, a graceful shoulder shrug for the death that surely awaited her. Her end is inevitable from the first chapters of the book. Was she not a spy, in German pay, and responsible for * the destruction of many lives during the war? The reader condemns her to ,be shot, even as . did the French Government, but not without regret. She attracts admiration at every turn, yet one is curiously attached, and as the reader comes from that last sight of her it is realised that she has that quality that commands instinctive htitaage—the quality 1 of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Mr. Temple Thurston has painted a haunting portrait. His book is sure to be widely read. " The Portrait of ft Spy." by Temple Thurston (Putnam's Sons).

PURPOSEFUL CHAFF. A. P. HERBERT OF PUNCH, Mr. Punch's " learned clerks " ' have acquired the habit of collecting themselves and being published in book foim. Not always do they yield successfully to such treatment, but " Honeybubble and Co " does Mr. Herbert every credit. Foreigners and the intellectually pretentious can sea no fun in Punch. Fortunately everyone's sense of humour is not the same, and Punch is written for the normal educated Englishman, who has a distaste for strong emotion of any sort. He does not want to laugh too hard, or cry too hard, or even think too hard. His sense of humour is not so ferocious as an American's nor so volatile as a Latin s. He prefers to have his faculties pleasantly titdlated by a quaint or unusual point of view, whero possible directed against the shortcomings of his neighbours. Mr. Herbert occasionally achieves a broader effect than most Punch artists, but he shows up in merciless yet sympathetic banter the pomps arid vanities of the day. His aim is to laugh extravagance back to normality. 'I he Honeybubble series, which gives the book its name, is a somewhat risky theme, because it caricatures the average Englishman with his genial platitudes and ma-chine-mad.e mind, a class to which the younger set with its machine-made pleasures is so surely going to belong any minute, that it is difficult to see just who escapes- its finger of fun. Afler Mr Herbert has explained the mechanism of night clubs—whero one drinks concoctions out. of flower vases in intense discomfort at treble the prices prevailing at the legalised houses next door, and whose management complains unless they get their fair share of raids—no one could eurely bo thrilled that way again. Then there is the tennis match in which either Trundle served a double fault, ot his second serve came over and Betty Bright or I returned it into the in the usual way; and the industrious white man in New York City pouring out the soul of a negro in primitive verse at 50 dollars'a line- and the man who wrote a cheque on the back of a bulldog and to his chagrin a pretty actress trundelled it al<,>ng to the bank and cashed it. The fun, in fact, grows fast and furious. " Honej-bubble and Co.", by P. HerDert (Methueu).