THE BOOKSHELF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20650, 23 August 1930, Page 8 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSHELF.

WORTHLESSNESS OF, MAN, A WOMAN'S BOOK. It is inevitable that " No Goodness in the Worm/' the brilliant first novel by Miss Gay Taylor, will cause a flutter in the dovecots of the novel-reading public. There is within its pages the delightful mixture of very good and very bad, that has so often proved irresistible. The first few pages, for instance, carry the reader away. Here, at last, are the very people one enjoys reading about. Here is a true picture of modern life. The next few chapters, perhaps, find one a little dubious, and this seo-sawing continues to the last chapter. But approval or disapproval scarcely counts, so excellent and stimulating is the writing. It is essentially a woman's book. It tells the story of a modorn, self-conscious and highly civilised woman of 25, who tastes life with glorious anticipation and finds it exceedingly bitter. It is unfortunately a book to delight all menhaters, for in no uncertain language do the young women of this book declaim against the modern, travesty of man. Not that the book, as it stands, says very much for the modern woman. The Valentino of Miss Taylor's story is (he sport of circumstances, and is denied the power of yea and nay in her own actions to an extent that is unconvincing in a girl of her character. It is not, however, the story of this novel that makes it important; that, one feels, is often false and overdrawn. It is the verve and brilliance of Miss Gay Taylor's style and her biting comments upon modern social life.

The book is heavy with the beauty of the changing seasons, and the tenderness of awakening love. It is ugly, too. Miss Taylor's characters are a little distorted, while even the course of their lives is sadly mismanaged ,in order that her theme, the worthlcssncss of man, might bo emphasised. i It is, however, a first novel, and sinc.p it teems with all the gifts of the borfi novelist, with vitality, shrewdness and i irony, the tendency toward overwriting] is easily forgiven. One can hardly wait for Miss Taylor's next book, so disturbing has been the effect of her first. "No Goodness in the "Worm," by Gay Taylor. (Gollancz). WATER GIPSIES. A. P. HERBERT IN FORM. Mr. A. r. Herbert finds much interest and inspiration in common people. It gives his books a warmth of human kinship very pleasant to come in contact with. His new book, " Water Gipsies," has all the ingredients which have endeared him to his wide circle of readers, the genial satire, the shrewd observation, the gay sallies of wit, the Punch-like love of England. ' The book introduces the Bell family, who live on a barge tied to a wharf on the Thames. Mr. Bell plays the cornet at a picture show by night, and cherishes the illusion that ho can forecast the speed of horses by day. His two daughters, Jane and Lily, live with him on the barge and generally bolster him up. As a sideline he is courting a comfortable widow who keeps a public house, whose charm " isn't the beer so much as the bonhomy." ' Jane is good and sensible, with an odd little desire for romance culled from the pages of the Sunday Gazette. She has two admirers, a hulking and silent bargeman called Fred., with a heart of gold, and Comrade Ernest, who complains, " You've got a bourgeois psychology, Jane; that's what's the matter with you." " You're standing in a puddle," said the practical Jane. But Jane is romantically in love with an artist called the Hon. George Gordon Byran, for whom she acts as model. After sitting for two silent hours on a river wall with Fred, being held in a passionate embrace in a motor-cab by Ernest, and posing on the model's throne for Mr. Byran, Jane concludes that all experience of men seems to lead in the end to cramp and pins and needles. Lily is gay and suffers from a disability to distinguish right from wrong. She runs wild and gains thirty pounds and a world of experience. Her conversation with Jane on returning to. the ancestral barge could have been written by no one but the author of " Topsy." Mr. Herbert takes his people on some most enjoyable excursions. They go to the Derby in a ramshackle car which drops to bits, and a prospective gain of £IO,OOO is changed into an actual loss of £IOO through a series of unforeseeable misfortunes which dogged the footsteps of a horse called " The Black Prince." Thero is a trip to Birmingham by bargewith some redoubtable encounters on the way; and a thrilling game of skittles in an alley by the inn. There is much friendly banter with modern art in the Punch manner. The weak spots are Ernest, violently " red," but peeling in spots, with whom Mr. Herbert has no real sympathy, and the artist, who is altogether inhumanly platonic, and uncomfortably lacking in gristle. Mr. Herbert runs off the rails for a time, but finishes well, with Jane, having failed* in ,her idyllic bid for the second or third best, bravely setting out to make the best of the seventh or eighth beso. Perhaps the book's greatest charm is its essentially English atmosphere, untainted by foreign influences. There are scenes where Charles Dickens might well have been a collaborator.

" "Water Gipsies," by A. P. Herbert. (Methuen.) CAPTAIN TO THE COOK. A SAILORS' STORY. " The Wooden Woman," by Alexander Townsend, is a tale of ships and sailormen, told in a most ingenuous manner. The story of a ship's maiden voyage and tho enthralling and terrible experiences of her crew is effectively related by a soldier to a group of sailors. It is tho evo of tho ship's last voyage, she has been sold to the shipbreakers. Tho sailors who listen are members of tho new crew. They find tho soldier's story half familiar, and realise that by some extraordinary coincidence they are all, from tho captain to (ho cook, descendants of tho original crow who sailed the ship outlier maiden voyage. Next morning the- ship slips her mooring and history begins to repeat itself. Terrified and assured of their inevitable doom, tho superstitious sailors do everything in their power to try and break tho sequenco ot events. They find that tho best they can do only delays disaster. Tho fact that tho story has been told serves to include the reader in the agony of apprehension shared by tho crow. Ib is in every respect a sailor's story, but it is sufficiently unusual and awe-inspiring to be popular with the insatiable thrillerreading public " The Wooden Woman." by Alexander Townsend. (Ileinomann.)