OLD AGE AND YOUTH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21450, 25 March 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)

OLD AGE AND YOUTH

AN AMERICAN NOVEL j In " The Sheltered Life " Ellen Glasgow has written a beautiful book, full of attractive and gracious people, a rare enough occurrence in present-day fiction. It is a slow book, but quick with understanding and insight, a book whose savour might easily be lost were the reader to skim or read carelessly. Its main theme is the growing up of Jenny Blair. Jenny, who discovers herself to be herself and different from anyone else, at the age of nine is an exquisite portrait. She is youth incarnate, and as rebellious and as sensitive to beauty as youth should be. Seen in relationship to her family, a widowed and tactful mother, an altogether splendid and gracious grandfather, and two aunts, the reader's sympathy is quickly won. Her adoration of Eva Birdsong, a neighbour whose beauty is a legend and whose happiness- she sacrificed everything for love is a subject of much speculation, is understandable. Thus far Mrs. Glasgow carries her readers with her, but in her portrayal of George, Eva Birdsong's husband, there will seem much that is unconvincing. The tragic and unexpected climax to the story is a shock that is not easily accepted; be that as it may when the book is finished and set aside it will be the little girl, Jenny Blair, who will be remembered, and her grandfather, an old man of eighty-four, sitting in the sun his old dog William at his feet, his tired old hands clasped on the crook of his stick, reviving fragments and scattered scenes from the past. > " T^ 16 Sheltered Life," by Ellen Glasgow. (Hememann.)