NEW NOVELS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 4

NEW NOVELS.

INTRODUCING A SWEDISH “SAGA” “ LacCmakcr Lekholm Has An Idea.” By Gustaf HeUstrom. Translated by P. H. Lyon. London: George Allen and Unwin. (6s net.) " Wife to Hugo." By Joy Baines. London: George G. Harrap. (6s net.)) " Shallow Seas.” By Richard Dehan. London: Thornton Butterworth. (6s net.) “ The Man Prom Butler’s.” By Charles Landstone. London; John Murray. (6s net.) " The Lily of Fort Garry." By Jana Rolyat. London: J. M. Dent and Sons. (6s net.) “ Cafe Noir.” By Jeannette Phillips Gibbs. London: W. ColUns Sons. (6s net.) "No Traveller Returns." By Jane England. London: Hurst and Blackett. (6s net.) “ Leave It To Susan.” By K. R. G. Browne. London: Cassell. (6s net.)

“ Lacemaker Lekholm Has an Idea ’’ is explained by the publishers as “a kind o£ Swedish ‘ Forsyte Saga ’ or Buddenbrookfl/” and one can find justification for the analogy in the fact that Gustaf Hellstrom’s novel is a family chronicle. The Swedish writer does not, however, depend upon Galsworthy or Mann in this long narrative. If a comparison in style were sought, one would find it rather in the work of Dickens, though the canvas is not as ample as that used by the great Victorian. There is in this book an unerring skill displayed in the portrayal of character, and particularly in demonstrating the effect of heredity and breeding upon character. The iao&xnaker, old Pehr Anders, who founds the Lekholm family, has an idea that ms sons should emerge from trade to the professional class, and it is on this inspiration that the cornerstone of the novel is built. Actually, the book covers a period of a hundred years in the history of the family, and we are given brief sketches of a wonderfully diverse set of people, all owning* despite their differences, however, something to the combination of weakness on the one hand, and solid bourgeois virtues on the other, of the lacemaker and his half-German wife. The story commences with the return of Karl, a grandson of Pehr Anders, from the United States, whither lie had fled after an estrangement with his father. From this point the author draws our interest back many years to observe the sources of the temperamental traits that found an outlet in Karl, then forward to the time when we are present at the dreary, middle-class family dinner at which Pehr’s 100th birthday is celebrated. There is something deeply touching in the picture of this uninspiring reunion, and of the old lacemaker, dressed for the occasion in his best black: —■

All those who now tftood crowded round him, and whom he hardly knew ! —all those and many others who had I not been able to be present had. their jif origin in that little shrivelled, dried-up ;■ f £<r ure ; human destinies scattered all U over the world, all distinct, and yet ■ I containing something of that which ; ■ t had once been the lacemaker, Pehr I Anders Lekholm, his merits and his

failings. ... The strength of Hellstrom’s work is in the detachment with which, through humour, pathos, and occasional dramatic flights, he can write of these people who must be very dear to him. His P^ 80 * 1 ’ alities, however different, stand out? real, and the book as a whole m artistic; ally complete. “ Lacemaker Lekholm wiU appeal to all who are interested m the contemporary literature of other countries. It is ably translated.

One of the developments in the modern novel is a tendency on the part of authors not merely to give an account of the activities of their characters, but to present a study of the mental processes reRrionsible for them. . Whether the treatment is superior to that Kuezestine a line of thought which the reader may follow in indicatmg rather than classifying character , m ay doubted, but the type of novel in which a situation is used as the basis of what amounts to a psychological study has become quite familiar. An example of unusually interesting kind 1S j P ™ V £ es “ Wife to Hugo by Miss Joy It will not be regarded as likely , that three brothers would fall m love vat one woman, but such a circumstance ha lippn chosen as the basis of the booh, ana St Mis, WJw the eldest of the brothers, a solid type of Englishman actuated always by the best motives and possessing a strong SsrsH woman for whom he has any icai a u pi are who is expected to marry w It is when Adam, already married and Clare find themselves in love with ea fcat real difficulties face the girl fo a r' e Ada e m and Clare T is rejected by them, of d thefr ir su£ring Ce presents an exceedingly interesting study u nusual emotions of the four & Slogical

* ■* * t„ « shallow Seas,” Richard Delian tells potentate « X.Tf writlS ag.« with a wealth of dramatic incident ibe • i If +v,« novel is laid m 19 id, ana period of the nov s a Ge rman SUfaiyertain naval fortifications and partly £ England. * trated novel will doubtless be widely read. * T'np 7-p is incident also, and especially a tSi tier’s ” The mam interest of the ?nnl however is in the remarkably degHfWSSS couriers “to-STtha SI who. with . knowledge Hj P T."~»ft no«co-.o Tt rnav be an elderly German woman who wishes.-safe to her home, or a party of visiting American school teachers, or a f «« 4nfr»mrpf er: it is all one to toe men Butler’s er They serve their temporary employers in whatever capacity is desired, they collect a handsome gratuity or reject a mean tip, and return to their smoking room at the head offices of the company to await another call in their time] tact, and ingenuity. Steadmore the hero of this novel, is such a courier, a gentleman who has fallen on rather evil days owing to the bad treatment his wife has accorded him. His second romance, whch centres about bis journeylngs, is the therneof the novel, and ends in a tragic manner. The story is interesting enough hut lacks the interest to the untrayelled which is contained in Mr Lands tone s absorbing account of the inner operations of Butler’s.

Interest of another sort attaches to Miss Rolyat’s “The Lily of Fort Garry for the good account it gives ns of pioneering days in Canada. ihe title of the hook, as Mr John Brophy has observed, is “dreadful,” but “The Lily of Uoit Garry” should not be avoided because of its title. The story running through it is a simple one of the love of a settlers daughter, Margaret Moore for Kooinmdah Koueh, the explorer ami officer of the Hudson Bay Company. It is delicately told, with an insight into the emotions of a young and unsophisticated girl of the woods, and sufficiently exciting to hold our interest. It is in her picture of pioneering Canada, with its woodland and prairie beauties, its farmsteads, stores, forts, Indian tribes, its hunters and rovagers, that Mxs Holy at pioves hei Beal worth as a writer. Books by Cana-

dians are few, especially worth-while novels, and ee The Lily of Sort Garry is therefore all the more welcome.

“Cafe Noir,” on the other hand, is a lin-ht and entertaining story of artist life in Paris. We find Charles Clayten, an American Bohemian, separated from his .wife and son, living in an ancient studio in Paris. He believes ambition to be a dreadful thing, and declares that public praise and money destroy the artist in a man. Therefore lie apparently spends most of his time playing chess. There are moments when Clayten reminds us or Carl van Vechten’s “Peter Whiffle, but only moments. This man, although he has a similar charm and talent for vagabondage, and enough of self-suffi-ciency, is not convincing, as Peter Whiffle most certainly was. He also lacks the other’s money. After he has lived artistically and promiscuously for the 12 years following his wife’s return to America with their son, Clayten meets and falls in love with Muriel Watkin, the beautiful and sheltered daughter of an American family living in Paris. In this book Mrs Gibbs tells us how Muriel leaves a life of comfort and luxury to become bis mistress. At the end of five years Muriel and Charles are still marvellously happy, and then' at last Mrs Clayten divorces him. Mrs Gibbs’s thesis appears to be that perfect love ( casteth out sin, and that an unconventional alliance may be more satisfying than one sanctioned by the Church. One wonders, therefore, why she is so palpably anxious to see her protagonists finally joined in wedlock, and at the haste with which she accomplishes this end when the way is clear.

In “No Traveller Returns,” Miss Jane England, i another _ competent woman novelist, again exhibits her faculty of being able to draw her characters distinctly, and her narration of how they act and react is well done. Her somewhat Zola-esque way of describing emotional changes, however, is not as fashionable to-day as it was a decade, or even half a decade, ago, and for that reason her latest novel may not meet quite as enthusiastic a reception as it would then have done. It is the story of how a girl, Dominic, perhaps best described as a near-Bohemian, is married to an incurable lunatic, for whom she has never felt hflection. Hopelessly in love with a rather Puritanical Rhodesian farmer, Stephen Driffield, she bigamously marries him just before her husband dies, and accompanies him to bis farm. Here other men flit in and out of her life, as is perhaps not unnatural when'an attractive young woman is transplanted to the middle of the African veldt, and later, of course, comes discovery of her crime. Her agony of mind, her flight, and how the other principals think and act when her subterfuge is exposed, are_ capably handled by Miss England, and in finally reaching a solution which will please most readers she acbomplishes some really clever work.

One hesitates to state that a humorous novel by a ■writer as well known for his literary jollity as K. R. _G. Browne has not struck one as particularly funny; hut that must be said of “ Leave it to Susan.” The story concerns the complications and misadventures that occur at a country house when the number of guests is added to by the arrival of a couple of stranded motorists, one of whom proves to be a smuggler of cognac. Of course, there is plenty of amusement to be derived from the amazing situations in which Mr Browne involves his victims, and we must allow his ingenuity and humorous mode of expression. Incidentally, the lightly-handled love story of Susan and her pleasant, much ill-used suitor, Nick Durham, is enjoyable. V. V. L.