MISSIONARY LIFE IN CHINA FAMOUS AUTHOR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22391, 11 April 1936, Page 4 (Supplement)

MISSIONARY LIFE IN CHINA

FAMOUS AUTHOR

PEARL BUCK'S LATEST In "The Exile," latest book, Mrs. Pearl Buck has a most moving portrait of an American woman, Carrie Stone, who went) to China, a bride, to work as a missionary with her husband. Her family sprang from sturdy independent Dutch stock. Her grandfather had been one of three hundred who had left Holland during a time of religious intolerance, forsaking all for the sake of God and liberty, to begin life again in Virginia. But her mother had been a romantic, pleasure-loving French woman, and in Carrie the Puritan characteristics were always at war with the sensuous artistic strain. In her early teens, in an age when girls lived in mortal fear for their souls. Carrie made a vow to become a missionary. She held to her determination against her father's wish, and to further her project married a young man whoso life was dedicated to the same work. Together, two un-

Stefan Zweig, born in Vienna In November, 1881, has remarkable gifts as a translator, and is an appreciative critic of the literature of other lands. His first important prose work, following a volume of poems, " Silver Strings," and a story, " The Life of Erika Ewald," was a monograph on Verlaine. Then came excellent translations of Baudelaire's poems and a monograph on Romain Rolland. Great insight is shown in his essays on Balzac, Dickens, Kleist, Nietzche and Holderlin.

sophisticated children full of hope and glory, they sailed for China and the saving of souls. Carrie remained in China for the rest of her life, but she was always recognisably American. She loved her country and its traditions and ideals, and strove to bring her children up in as American a manner as possible. She never became accustomed to the filth and disorder of the lives of the poor people in China, and while her husband travelled the country converting the heathen, she did the practical work that came to her hand. She helped the women by listening to their troubles, taught them to read, to care for their children; she nursed the sick and tried to instil the rudiments of cleanliness and order.

As a story of missionary life in China in tho early days of the century the book is most interesting and informative. The manner of telling nnd a certain tendency to include irrelevant incidents, presents the possibility that Mrs. Buck writes the true story of some familiar and much loved figure. As a work of fiction it does not compare with "Good Earth," but in the portrait of Carrie there is much that is unforgettable, also a spiritual cournge and moving human quality which makes an immediate and inspiring appeal. ''The Exile," by Pearl Buck, (Methuen.)