THE BOOKSHELF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21332, 5 November 1932, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSHELF

" YEAR'S AT THE SPRING" WHEN THE WORLD Y/AS YOUNG To read Margery Sharp is to taste again the careless rapture of one's early twenties, when the world was.wide and wonderful and waiting to be captured. Memo-::. ries of that greeti time are often piercingly sweet, but they are dim enough, except for those isolated moments when a line of a poem, a name, an unexpected encounter, or a book such as " Fanfaro for Tin Trumpets " will with magical swiftness mako one, for an instant, actually twenty again. Happiness sings with youthful abandon that all is well with tha world, and power stirs sweetly beneath the surface. . . Of course, there is scarcely time to feel the edges of this recaptured twenty when it is gone and the daily round abruptly jerks the elbow, but how grateful one is for the visitation, how thankful one is for the Margery Sharps. " Fanfare for Tin Trumpets," Miss Sharp's second novel, has more than fulfilled the expectations roused by her extremely individual " Rhubarb Pie." It tells the experiences of a boy of twentyone. who, with one hundred pounds in his pocket, and plenty of self-confidence, went to London in the expectation of astonishing the literary world within the year. He settles in humble quarters and immediately his analytical eye gets to work on his fellow-boarders. His first and breathless encounter with literary London is delicious; so, too, is Cressida, his first love. But in spite of his ideas nothing that he writes is ever finished. His year ends, his hundred pounds ends, and fortunately his outlook on life changes. But he has had a lovely year. So has the reader. Miss Sharp writes with a sure touch. She has the saving grace of humour. A real future may be predicted for her. " Fanfare for Tin Trumpets," by Margery Sharp. "(Barker.) AN INTERESTING PLAY STONEWALLING A BUTTERFLY " Cecilia," a play by Allan Monkhouse, has a familiar theme and setting, but follows a new argument and has a new conclusion. The son of the house, an Oxford graduate, suddenly arrives at his home with a bride frcun the film firmament. The family's attitude is -correct, but cold". The father offers a home and an income, but dictates terms —darning and /tennis parties; the mother wards o5 blows; the sister fs sisterly, but remote. It is oil and water once again. For Cecilia is a butterfly painted with garish colours; she must have movement and change and exuberance. She dislikes roots, and she thinks aloud things that the family she has come among conceal and pretend iare not there. " I'm most "sincere" when I'm acting," she cries, in one of her unexpected, flashes of vision. And so she flees to with one of her own kind, who can give her fame and excitement and the power of money. But the venture fails; she is broken and deserted, and, in distress, creeps home to the family which has roots. Once more she is correctly received, but there are signs of heart and belonging behind the smooth front. She dreads ceasing to be herself, fights against giving in, being swallowed up by kindness, but finds herself yielding her " raffish little habits " to the stone wall and the roots. An interesting play, in ..which the intellectual and philosophic plane is perhaps heightened abovo that of a similar section in real life. *' Cecilia," a play by Allan Monkhouse. (Gollancz.) AN EXCITING CRUISE SEA AND CIPHERS They never grow stale, these books about yachtsmen who go cruising in their holidays and run into plots and secrets which they succeed in unravelling. Everyone knows the outcome before they reach the plot; no bookmaker in the land would lay odds against the yachtsmen. But there is no resisting them, especially if they have a kidnapping, a marooning, and, above all, a cipher. Mr. George Blake, in " Sea Tangle," has provided all this and more. Fast motor-boats, a Lord Advocate,, secret stills, smuggling on a huge scale, machine-guns, "dago' villains, Scotch giants, a beautiful girl ind a revenue detective of impressive intelligence are some of the ingredients of this attractive story, whose characters leap about between Scotland and Europe with amazing agility. For, in spite of this formidable list, there is a pleasant love story and an enjoyable, if disturbed, cruise running through • it, and for those who like it there is the solving of the cipher in an appendix, which reads almost like over-measure. The three young men and the Scotch engineer who go voyaging in the Sylvia are distinct and richly-drawn One longs to make the fifth in such a crew. " Sea Tangle," by George Blake. (Faber •nd Faber.) TRAGEDY OF EXILE A SCOTTISH ROMANCE Miss Agnes Mackenzie calls up the tenderness and svmpathy of the reader in her story of Eneas Mackenzie, a Scot in exile in France during the civil war of '45. It is not many pages before Miss Mackenzie's quality as a writer is realised. This seemingly slight and romantic story is perfectly imagined.. She succeeds in getting inside the mind of her hero and knows him so intimately that it seems impossible for her to make a false step. In consequence her book is one that comes to the tired mind with an extraoidinary sense of refreshment. Eneas Mackenzie is one of four Scotchmen who in the opening chapters of <e book make good their escape to Fiance. Eneas goes to a kinswoman and in (omse of time becomes tutor to a son of a J e 9"" 'live of the family. The tranquility of his life in France is in sharp contrast to the opening chapters which were full of the nervous apprehension of escape. His personality is charming and lie is grea ly valued by his new friends. He falls in love, is disillusioned, and in the violent reaction of his emotions almost loses his reason. So painful is this chapter tha the reader is childishly grateful to realise with Eneas that the evidence of his eyes is false. Fr.ith is restored and the scene is set for tragedy which, following on disillusionment, seems quite bearable. Willi Eneas' return to Scotland the stoiy comes to a tragic 'end, but the story has been unfolded with such warmth and sincerity that a feeling of delicate exhilaration is left in the mind of the reader. " Between Sun and Moon." by Agnes lluic Mackenzie. (Constable.)