THE BOOKSHELF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22142, 22 June 1935, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSHELF

FIRST-RATE SEA STORY A PUNGENT HUMOUR There are no authors more sure of a payable public to-day than those who can write about the sea and get the tang of salt in it. It is rather surprising how few of them there are. There must be many thousands of men at sea with time on their hands, many of whom have unsuspected literary gifts, yet what a handful make use of them.

All the more welcome, then, is Mr. J. E. Pile, whose first novel, "Blue Surge," is sure to command immediate success. He clearly knows the sea, and even more intimately, the inside of ships—disreputable ships manned by mongrel crews —and he "knows more about foid fighting than any man outside China." He has a pungent and disruptive humour, but more than all he has a wonderful gift of making a narrative run and leap along. He adopts the old device of keeping several different sets of events all converging on a point; but he keeps them under strict control and handles them with masterly effect.

Messrs. Stabies, Partner and Houghton were a firm of deep-sea contractors who undertook to deliver anything that would float, to any port in the world. Thus the people of "Blue Surge" were the officers and crew engaged in delivering a craft called the Hermanos Benvenuto to the port of Malpuesta on the West Coast of South America. Having a fortnight to fill in before making a connection for home they are hard put to it. The trouble arose through Hurbison "who had the kind of brain that is unexpectedly fertile so long as it is not applied to an3 T thing useful" deciding to collect all the cats in the town and drop them through the fanlight of the local butcher's shop. A simple, innocent pastime, one would have thought, hut it led to plots, gimrunning, revolution, naval encounters and to their being sunk in midocean by the Batifonderian Navy, and finally sent home with honour as "force auxiliar" to the said navy. The book owes much of its humour to the peculiar brand of Spano-Anglo-Dagonese in which the American characters speak, and is the kind ctf story that keeps one's feet glued to the fender on the coldest of nights.

" Blue Surge," by J. E. Pile. (Heinemann.) RICH RELATIONS MARY MITCHELL'S LATEST "Pendulum Swing" will come p.s a surprise to those who expected from Mary Mitchell yet another "Warning to Wantons." Her second book is as serious as her first was flippant. She deals with the vexed question of relations, a subject dear to many readers, and one which gives Miss Mitchell scope to be refreshingly herself. Christina Macpherson, the heroine of the story, is hopelessly unattractive both in appearance and in manner, and suffers agonies of humiliation and, selfconsciousness, since she is intelligent and proud. She is poor and is cursed with wealthy and attractive relations, who insist on lending a helping hand. Her mother, a most futile and snobbish little woman, forces her daughter into impossible situations. She strains every effort to lead a social life —how else will she get her daughter married —and poor Christina, made desperate by her mother's obviousness, becomes even more gauche with each appearance. She has little instinct for self-preservation and rushes into marriage with a flashy bank clerk, who hopes for advancement through her relations. Time, however, dulls her sensitiveness; she grows philosophical and in her love of nature there is a promise of release from the long littleness of her life. The study is extraordinarily interesting. Her dependence on her foolish mother and wealthy relations isolates Christina from the possibility of a life of her own. Miss Mitchell shows her as an unattractive figure, but she gains the sympathy of all who resent almost as bitterly as Christina herself, the favours conscientiously hestowed by rich relations. Christina is the outstanding portrait in the book, but there are others equally arresting. Miss Mitchell sees people from an individual and interesting angle " Pendulum Swing:," by Mary Mitchell. (Heinemann.)

QUEER OCCUPATIONS AUTHENTIC STORIES " Odd Jobs," by Pearl Binder, is is frankly informative, hut the unusual nature of the information supplied, no less than- her sophisticated treatment and the broad humour of her illustrations, has an immediate attraction for the reader. The twelve stories —which she claims are authentic —have some of the qualities of a close-upion the films; they are closer and larger than is comfortable at a first meeting. Yet Miss Binder initiates the reader gently, and it is " The Ostler " who opens the book, a humble kindly figure who lives a very natural life beside the animals that he tends. He is treated sympathetically if not a little sentimentally by the author, who, however, is merely getting into her stride. The novelist shows herself to be more at ease when writing " The Bohemian," the story of Basil, who fired by Gaugin's example, left his wife and two children to win fame in London as a poet. Unfortunately he had no talent and his miserable existence as hanger-on at beer parties is detailed with amusing detachment.

" Puka-Poo," the story of an English girl of gipsy stock, who marries a Chinaman in the East End and runs a puka-poo agency, belongs to the same category. Of quite another typo are "Madame Tussaud's" and "Dictionary Compiler." The former is by way of being a footnote to history, while the latter, which is nothing less than a peep at Mr. J. E. Manson while he compiles Harrap's Standard French and English Dictionary, is none tho less enthralling. " Odd Jobs," by Pearl Binder (Harrap).