NEW NOVELS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20217, 30 March 1929, Page 7 (Supplement)

NEW NOVELS.

THE LATEST " ELIZABETH." " Expiation." by the author of " Elizabeth and Her German Garden" (Macmillan). " Judith Silver," by Hector Bolitho (Knopt). " Dear Acquaintance," b7 Rosemary Rees (Chapman and Hall). The author of " Elizabeth and Her German Garden," to use the rather cumbrous periphrasis which the Countess Russell seems to prefer, is possessed bv a pretty wit. She is a kind of literary enfant terrible who can say the most outrageous things and " get away with them," thanks to her disarming air of childish simplicity. In " Expiation " the Botts are a prosperous and highly-respected suburban clan. Of all the brothers' wives, none was more popular than Milly, wife of Ernest Bott, '* a little cushiony woman of 45 with dimples on her plump hands and agreeable hair, the colour of respectability." Yet when her husband dies suddenly, the terms of his will suggest that Milly is by no means as impeccable as she seems. The reactions of this staggering situation upon the family, the secret satisfaction of some of the less agreeable sisters-in-law, the determination of the whole clan to silence scandalous gossip, the calmly-detached attitude of a most unusual mother-in-law—all are seen from an original '* Elizabethan " angle. The episode of the meeting of the two long-estranged sisters is a masterpiece of restraint, a tragedy in miniature. Everything, in fact, that " Elizabeth " writes has the charm which made her cous:n Kathenns Mansfield once say: " The point about Elizabeth is that one loves her and is proud of her."

*" .Judith Silver," Mr. Hector Bolitho's second novel, is mainly a study of parental love perverted into an insensate lust cf possession. James Grantham is the victim of this morbid greed which finally culminates in insanity. Simon, his son, blessedly normal by contrast with his unpleasant father, goes Home to Cambridge, and after some unimportant dalliance, finds his true soul-mate in Judith Silver, an operatic prima donna. Meanwhile his father, now recovered, has also come to England. But the old jealously is only asleep and awakens at the news of Simon's engagement. There power in the portrayal of the mounting frenzy in the father's brain. The grasping thumbs still seek a victim. Thumbs indeed, dominate the book. The New Zealand background is a3 queerly unreal as in Mr. Bolitho's earlier books. Women in post-war days dressed in stiff galatea (did this material survive the Victorian era''), hotel signs creaking in the wind, flower farms where at Christmas time one "azes upon masses of irises or the blood red blossom of the kowhai tree—what are we to call such a picture of our native land. * * * * With each succeeding book Miss Rosemary Rees increases in narrative and constructive power. VY isely recognising her limitations, she attempts nothing more than the writing of a readable and pleasant story, the " rattling good yarn " growing ever rarer in a world of would-be masterpieces. The author's personal experience of theatrical liie gives reality to her scenes behind the scenes, while in order to obtain authentic local colour for the later portions of her story she travelled by a cargo boat from London to Bordeaux (the onlv woman on board), spent some time in an old Basque farmhouse outside Biarritz, and actually got locked up in a prison cell in order to feel what it was like. Hilary Ware, her heroine, is a charming Australian girl. But why was she not a New Eealander 1