AMERICA TO-DAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23275, 18 February 1939, Page 15 (Supplement)

AMERICA TO-DAY

By E.A.B,

THREE much-travelled men who met one day at lunch in Geneva were discussing that puzzling and complex country, the United States of America. One , wound up the talk by saying that in spite of all the weird and wonderful things that people did in America, one would find there more likeable people to the square mile than anywhere else in the world. And there is more than a germ of truth in that. America to-day is the subject of Mr. Upton Sinclair's latest novel, "Little iT Steel.", It will 1 be read with more appreciation in America than elsewhere, because it deals with problems and People close to the American heart. Yet to all English-speaking people it should be at least a most readable and entertaining book. . There is more than just light readhere. The story deals with industrial America and the conflicts that sunder the family of a steel "king}," Walter jjudson Quayle. He is the pivot of the book. We may wonder whether there ®Ver was, outside the pages of a book, a mild and simple man as he in steel industry, hut we

An Upton Si

accept him as a lovable old stampcollector with a bee in his bonnet about the Reds. Unfortunately, his youngest daughter, Genevieve, the apple of her father's eye, imbilbes some revolutionary ideas at college and she sticks to them. Then ciomes trouble for the Quayle family. Thci hook weaves some serious threads into its pleasant humour. Strikes and strike'breakers follow with grim tragedy the adventurous advent of that very American gentleman, the "industrial counsellor," but this middle section of the book is not long enough to wear the render down and make him think he is reading only t another economic treatise. The second half of the story, like all good novels, is better that/the first, and the way in which old Quayle finds peace of body and quiet of mind is almost an idyll. He resurrects a most delightful fellow, a long-lost cousin, and together they desert the steel country for the open.road—and how! There is a lot of laughter in the book, a good deal of philosophy, and, as our Geneva friend had it, some charming American people. Mr. Sinclair has too great a name as a novelist to need fresh praises, but he loses nothing of his literary reputation by his latest achievement. "Little Steel," by Upton Sinclair. (T. Werner Laurie.)