RECENT FICTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21544, 16 January 1932, Page 4

RECENT FICTION

" American Beauty.” By Edna Ferber (ffm, Helnemann). “ The King’s Goose.” By Alfred Tressider Sheppard (Hodder and Stoughton). “ Guests of Summer.” By Paul M. Fulcher (Selwyn and Blount). “The Jeeves Omnibus.” By P. G. Wodehouse. With Portrait (Jenkins, 7s 6d net). “ Rhymer’s Wake.” By Mary MacCarvill. Frontispiece Illustration (John Murray). " The Vagrant Heart." By Delrdre O’Brien (Mills and, Boon). “ Thin ice.” By Barbara Goolden (Chapman and Hail). " Trail of Plunder.” By Louis Kayo (Wriglit and Brown). "Whoso Name Is Legion.” By Isabel C. Clarke (Hutchinson). “ Jinks." By Oliver Sandys (Hurst and Blackett). " A Lonely Maid." By Katharine Tynan (Ward, Lock). (Each Gs net unless otherwise stated.) Hills Were Higher Then Miss Edna Ferber does the kind of thing that she does remarkably well, with vigour, colour and grace. The thing that she does, as readers of “ Show Boat ” and “ Cimarron ” will know, is to portray some vivid, unwritten chapter of American history, investing it with a romantic glamour which causes one to reflect, “ those were the days! ” —to believe that indeed the hills were higher then. The beginning and the end of “ American Beauty ” have a modem setting, while the rich body of the book takes the reader back to Connecticut in the early eighteenth century, when life, for the prosperous English colonists, was a more leisurely, graceful occupation. True Baldwin, a Chicago millionaire; takes his daughter Candace, an architect, on a holiday to the scenes of his boyhood. He is disturbed to find that Central Europeans have supplanted the English stock he remembers, and the charming home of his first love, Judith Oakes, in the possession of Orrange Olszak, a Polish descendant. The fine old house, of 20 rooms, with fireplaces by Christopher Wren, hag fallen into disrepair owing to the poverty of its present owner. From this point the story skips back to describe the early magnificence of the English Oakes, to depict the transplanted ancestral splendour of the Connecticut landed aristocracy. It is a hroad, impressive canvas, which gives place in turn to a sketch of the meaner conditions in the nineties, and explains how Orrange Olszak comes to he in possession of the Oakes’s home. When we return at length tp True and his daughter in their association with this attractive young man we know that, after, its vicissitudes, the old estate is to have, once again, a gracious lord and lady and a sufficient income to assure the restoration of its beauty and the comfort of its owners. Like her previous novels, Miss Berber's American Beauty ' is well worth reading, and sufficiently dramatic and multi-coloured, whether by accident or design, to make a successful kinema film. On With the . Motley

The title of Mr Alfred Treseider Sheppard’s new historical novel comes from an old French proverb: “He who eats the King’s goose must give back the feathers even a hundred years after. The reader will appreciate the aptness of the allusion when he has followed the fortunes of an unhappy Punchinello to a tragic conclusion. Mr Sheppard believes that it is a good thing “to take historical characters out of the cupboards of memory and prejudice now and then for inspection and spring-cleaning,” but he admits that this romance depends as much upon an early French fiction as the historical persons who are presented —Louis XII, Diane of Poitiers, and others in the pageant of mediaeval France. Most fascinating, grotesque, centre-piece for his tapestry is the Salle des Fous where reside clowns, dwarfs, and monsters employed to entertain the king. Papa Caillette, a drink-60dden old mountebank, and ins gentle, handsome reputed son h ranee, who is believed to have in his veins the blood of Louis de Bourbon, are of this company, France enters the house of St. Vainer, where he falls in love with madcap Diane, here quite as attractive as her recent penportrait by Jehanne d’Orliac, recently reviewed on this page. But first Dianes marriage to the Seneschal de Breze, and then the unfortunate France’s promotion,” which gives him the post of masterfool, frustrate the dreams of the young man. Mr Sheppard is one of the, soundest, most painstaking of historical novelists, and u The King’s Goose satisfies as much for its solid background as for the story itself. “ Guests of Summer ”

Another long novel, with a title from Shakespeare, ‘ r Guests of Summer, provides good reading for those, and there are many of them, _ who enjoy going through a lengthy, circumstantial story. The hero, Jack Amory, is shown to .us in his growth—evolution is a better word — from childhood to a day when he believes he has finally found, in the love of a woman met in unusual circumstances, the answer to life. Amory is the illegitimate son of parents forced apart by Puritan prejudice, and in order to give the background for his personal history Mr Fulcher goes back three generations. In a Puritan small town in the United States we are introduced to Amory’s ferociously upright forbears, so righteous that their harshness threatens to blight the “Y? 8 of others even after they have died. We follow Amory in his flight froin the repressive influences of boyhood, through a period of idyllic adolescence, and into the war, where he meets the girl who finally, seven years later, has such an influence in heading him to happiness and peace of mind.

Passengers to Jeeves Mr Wodehouse confesses to a certain sense of pride in the publication of his first omnibus book, because: “Well, dash it, you can’t say it doesn’t mark an epoch in a fellow’s career and put him just a bit above the common herd. P. G. Wodehouse, 0.8. Not such a very distant step from P. G. Wodehouse, O.M. All the same, he suggests that this 850page volume of Jeevesiana should be taken in moderate sips, not bitten all off at one sitting, for while this can be accomplished it is, be assures us, not worth doing just for the sake of saying you have done it. Jeeves, we learn in the introduction, first came into existence 15 years ago when, in “The Man With Two Left Feet,*’ he spoke two lines. It is a t somewhat amazing revelation to this reviewer that, since this was the first Wodehquse novel he read, he has been an erratic but enthusiastic Wodehouse “fan” during a large portion of his life. Jeeves remains good company, along with that asinine employer, the Hon. Bertie Wooster, and we can commend this collection of 31 stories concerning them. Nor are we dismayed at Mr Wodehouse’s assurance that Jeeves ie not polished off yet.

A Rhymer Returns “Rhymer’s Wake ’’ is one of those quite rare tales which must be well done or not at all, and are designed to play a muted melody on the heart-strings. The charm of such a story must depend largely upon its simplicity—the treatment may be sentimental but it must be sincere and sparing of emotional effects if the finale is to be on the true chord. Mrs MacCarvill describes the. home-coming of Peter the Rhymer, who, a care-free, unimportant ballad-maker in his life, becomes of some importance in the village when he returns to die. The soft idiom of Ulster, the childish wonder and grief of the child Davnet, the semi-pagan, though in this case not orgiastic, wake, are shown by the author of this first novel in words that are kindly, wellchosen, and display a great love for the simple folk of her tale. “ The Vagrant Heart ” “The Vagrant Heart" is also a novel which proclaims a, love of Ireland and the Irish folk, and an appreciation of what the Roman Catholic Church means in that soft-spoken land. The heroine, Joan Connolly, grows restless in the quiet atmosphere of Ballyholden and welcomes a chance of going to London and abroad to see how what is evidently the novelist’s conception of dissolute “ Society ’’ lives. Joan returns to Ballyholden content to rest surrounded by green fields, and secure in the love of an Irishman, after her {letterings in the great world. Miss O’Brien is quite a competent young* novelist, despite a superficial treatment ot character.

The Skaters “Thin Ice" is a clever and racy story of married life under modern conditions, and of the harm that may result from the well-meant but interference of relatives with the affairs of the young couple. Miss Goolden is a mistress

of dialogue, and the natural conversations in the story scintillate with clever repartee and subtle gibes. A doting mother presumes to give her daughter some good advice regarding her young and prepossessing husband, and it is only the innate common sense and deep-rooted affection of the young couple which avert a catastrophe and bring the story to a-> happy ending.

Bushrangers Mr Louis Kaye, whose first novel, “ Tybal Men,” was enthusiastically received, bids fair to achieve quite as great a success with his second effort, “ Trail of Plunder.” This, too, is a forceful picture of one phase of Australian life, and is drawn with the same powerful strokes. The heroes are Australian bushrangers whose depredations are, by one of the principal characters at any rate, to a large extent excused by an analogy drawn between them and the recourse to arms had by the great colonisers. Whatever may he said of this point of view, it is undeniable that Mr Kaye knows how to present characters that live, and he has placed them in a well-reasoned plot. To those who enjoy full-blooded action in their reading and appreciate an absence of strange slang, “Trail of Plunder” may he confidently commended. Rival Creeds In her new novel, “Whose Name is Legion,” Miss Isabel Clarke deals with Spiritualism and Roman Catholicism as opposing forces, Pamela Winston, while on a visit to a country house in Norfolk, participates in a seance, at which the figure of a powerful Arab is evoked. Later, when she has married Ralph Mellish and goes to Algeria, the mystery attaching to this sinister manifestation is worked out to a tragic climax. Miss Clarke does not spare herself pains in writing her novels, and “Whose Name is Leghjp ” contains the necessary elements of suspense and mysticism. “ Jinks ”

“Jinks ” is a new incarnation of the popular Oliver Sandys heroine. Redhaired, roguish, and brimming over with “sex appeal,” a quality which she considers an encumbrance. Jinks commences her career as a maid-of-all-work in a Bloomsbury boarding, house. Her adventures are diverting, and result from the interweaving of her destiny with that of an aristocratic family in a neighbouring house. The end: “. . . Jinks, I worship you, and that’s the truth! ” Jinks raised an ecstatic face, incarnadined like the roses on the table, and radiant with jov. “ Same here,” she murmured faintly. “If you kiss me I think I’ll pass out. But—you can try.” “ A Lonely Maid ”

The late Katharine Tynan, whost posthumous novels apparently are legion, drew the heroine of “ A Lonely Maid ” as a little Irish girl, Doreen, who lives with her grandfather in a lonely castle. He hates her for her mother’s misdemeanours, but Doreen finds good friends in Father O’Rourke, Hilda Divine, an understanding woman, and other sweet characters. There is a touch of Irish wistfulness in Katharine Tynan’s writing.which redeems her stones from banality. V. V. L.