DR. CRONIN'S NEW NOVEL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21562, 5 August 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)

DR. CRONIN'S NEW NOVEL

GIFT OF CHARACTERISATION After tho phenomenal success of " Hatter's Castle " and w Three Loves," any new novel by Dr. A. J. Cronin must bn eagerly awaited. " Grand Canary " should provide him with his third mccess. It may not invade the realms of tho best sellers, but . it is a story excellently told in its way, and containing somo memorable character studies. Dr. Harvey Leith commenced a health trip to the Canary Islands a ruined man. Years of self-sacrificing medical research had culminated in the deaths of patients in circumstances leading to a morbid howl of publicity. Drink followed, and then with a motley collection of passengers he was shipped on board a banana boat to make a sea voyage for recovery which he did not desire. The story tells of Leith's salvation by a woman. It is traced with real sympathy and understanding, and there are visionary passages of rare beauty. The chapters in which Leith, forgetting his past in love, battles for the life of the woman he loves when she is stricken with yellow fever have an intensity of feeling which holds tho reader to every 'word. B(it Dr. Cronin has really adopted tho modern method of making his plot of secondary importance to his characters. There is-more than one story in " Grand Canary." His study of an American missionary is something of almost incredible power, and sketches of an old Irish showman and the Cockncv proprietor of a disreputable establishment in Santa Cruz, known as Mother Hemingway, are a sheer delight. The author is not really a Storyteller in " Grand Canary the entire construction of the novel is too loosely knit for that. But he jshows himself again as a master of characterisation with a bold and sure touch. " Grand Canary." by Dr. A; J. Cronin. (Gollancz.)