BOOKS OF THE DAY: REVIEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25160, 24 March 1945, Page 10

BOOKS OF THE DAY: REVIEWS IN BRIEF

Fleet Air Arm Poet _ "Against the Lightning" is a collection of very fine, lyric poems awarded the Poetry Prize in a recent literary competition conducted by the publishing house of John Lane. The author, Hugh Popham, who is a young member of the Fleet_ Air Arm, shows remarkable talent in these his first pieces. All were written on active service. Mainly about the life of an airman, his verses are rich in beauty of expression and vision. Especially notable is the title poem, which tells, with vivid imagination and perception, of life aboard an aircraft-carrier —the daily reconaissance flights, thoughts when high above the sea, when battling in the air and ,at last the happy home-coming up the Clyde: "Dirty with rain The grey street? climb the hillside. Colourless, damp, roof, wall and spir» and tree; Down-river wind, And wheeling ceaselessly statuary of unite "Wave-white wing sweeping scavengers. And home again." Private Lives The mass examination of private life which Mrs Leila Secor Florence undertakes in "Our Private Live?" is cast in the mould of a contrast between Britain and America. There are well chosen pictures that show the different ways in which the two English-speaking peoples approach such matters as picnics (British grass is better than American;, garden fences, travelling salesmen. carpet slippers, and the milk round. These are supported by a lively text, and several Isotype charts. (Harrap.) Death to U-Boats "Escort Carrier," by Lie.itenantCornmander John Moore, is full of interesting information. No new type of ship has played such an important part in winning the Battle of the Atlantic, and also in facilitating our landings at balerno, Anzio and in the South of rrance, than the escort aircraft carJwi', i • n Uten . a "t-Com ma nder Moore deals chiefly with the escort carriers in th e U-boats, and gjres- a first-hand account of life on board one of these ships at sea. John SSWVnv* 7 * |£«?t "Air "wrffof S 5 penence and ability. (Hutchinson.)! _

Norwegian Resistance The underground movement has provided several thrillers since the Nazis overran Europe. "Live Dangerously," by Axel Kielland t is a story of Norwegian resistance to the Hun with many of the characteristics and much of the excitement of a thriller and which has at the same time a suggestion of reality. The hero is a rich young man-about-town, well known in the bars of Oslo and the black market, who is drawn by a pretty face into a series of startling adventures. The book is eminently readable. (Collins, Auckland.) Russia of Today Miss E. M. Almedingen's "Frossia" achieved a well-deserved success. It was a vivid and human story of Soviet Russia during the period of her greatest difficulties, and its heroine symbolised very well the birth of a new nation.

In that story there was a little crippled girl who was sent to the Crimea to be cured. Now in "Dasha'' this girl's further history is unfolded, and the new book is an equally interpretative record. Here, indeed, you see Russia in process of realising her own colossal strength, and Dasha herself, with her genius for carving, her difficulty in understanding her own nature, her love for the ex-fouridiing who has become a distinguished lecturer, and her bravery in face of the enemy, may well stand for the Russia of today. (Bodley Head.) Honest Thinking Two feelings are consistently revealed in "Reflections in a Mirror," Mr Oiarles Morgan's collection of essays on literature —relief that the period between the wars is over, and scorn for the writers typical of that period, who were politicians first and artists a long way after. These essays are the fruit, of hard and honest thinking by a fine mind. (Macmillan.)