BOOK NOTICES

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1747, 30 August 1905, Page 22

BOOK NOTICES

“Patinosby .Kathleen Inglewood. Gordon and G-otch, London. .New Zealand has not given origin to many novels, and it is hardly to be expected that it should yet do so. We do not recollect any former instance of that variety of fiction, the novel with a purpose, emanating from a New Zealand writer. “Patmos” is however, of this class. It is a fairly bulky book and has for its object the propagation of prohibition teachings. We have no quarrel with, it on this account j there is probably no subject material or mental which genius might not illuminate with the light of art. The leader of the realistic novel will recall the achievement off Zola in “L’Assomoir.” The reader of that work, or one who is acquainted with Charles Reade’s powerful dramatisation of it under the laconic title “Drink,” can never forget Coupeau, the lesson of his bright life ruined and degraded, and the dragging of ins family down to perdition. A mighty moral well taught was there, anti one that left no room/to quarrel with the methods of the artist. There is therefore nothing intrinsically objectionable m the subject from the .; point of view of literary fitness. _ The writer of “Patinos” while certainly possessed of a fluent narrative style, evinces nothing of the genius essential to the elevation of Prohibition into a matter of literary interest. Throughout the subject remains, where it naturally belongs, in .the realm of platform controversy and local politics. The characters, of whom from the point of view of effective work there are far too y many, are in several cases more or less idealised representations of men wellknown amongst us. Others there are, too, who are obvious figments of the authoress’s imagination. A thin thread of personal interest binds these together but the movement overshadows everything else and the narrative of elections and deputations makes heavy and prosy reading. We are too near to and too intimately interested in the r great social and political movement going on in this colony, too familiar with its leaders and the fluctuations of their political fortunes to be able just yet to get them into the perspective of a novel. “Patmos,” whose title is a strain on the literary knowledge of the average reader, is bad history and but moderately good literature.