RECENT FICTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22742, 30 November 1935, Page 4

RECENT FICTION

"The Three Friends." By Norman Collins (Gollancz). _ , _ „ " The Wooden Pillow." By Carl Fallas (Helnemann). " Farmer’s Boy." By John R. Allan. Illustrated. (Methuen, 9s). " Forest Twilight." By Frank Dorn (Harrap). “ Second Thoughts." By Mary le Bas (Nelson). “Wild Memory." By Anne Duffleld (Cassell). " The Spy Paramount." By E. Phillips Oppenheim (Hodder and Stoughton). "A Most Immoral Murder.” By H. Ashbrook (Eyre and Spottiswoode). " The Green Lantern." By Ben Bolt (Ward, Lock). _ " Call In the Yard." By David Hume (Collins). , , , (Each 7s unless otherwise stated.)

“ The Three Friends ’* Norman Collins, having written lucidly and intelligently about “The Facte of Fiction,” has come to write fiction himself. His novel, “The Three Friends, establishes that Mr Collins is not merely a theorist in the sphere. It is a book that has the full-bodied characterisation, the multiplicity of detail, and particularity of plot that make many a reader exclaim: “Now that’s what 1 call a really good story.” The friends are commercial travellers, three bagmen of varied tastes and many encounters, who, through the very dissimilarities that mark them, find satisfaction in one another’s occasional company and, through incidents small in themselves, come to play a critical role in one another’s lives. Mr Collins is no idealist. He allows the particular genius of events, known as “ the Captain,” no more virtue than such a product of the war and a bogus public school instinct may possess. The other two men, the pathetic little family man. Birdie, and the self-assured, but somehow rather piteous Clagg, he delineates more kindly, but for the most part quite objectively. They are credible people, not especially admirable, by. no means heroic, who work mainly for their own ends, and do not always win. Into the pattern made by these three travellers in their peregrinations and occasional convivial meetings, Mr Collins brings a large number of subsidiary people—Birdie’s wife, who is drawn from the novelist’s common stock or suburban housewives, Clagg’s wife and sister, who are distressingly real, the captain’s Yvonne, a well-drawn and representative girl of a modern type that may lie grudgingly respected without admiration. Then he introduces a wedding, a funeral, a near suicide, some chat about the local bowling club, and interiors in pubs, temperance hotels, night clubs, and a Bournemouth villa. His novel has no particular message or inspiration for its readers. It is a 'competent elaboration on the popular theme that There s so much good in the worst of us • • It indicates that in investigating fiction, Mr Collins discovered a few facts about what the public may he expected to like, and that he considered the Priestley, model moat suitable. But_ one need not take apart a hook when its mechanism, while containing no improvements on yesteryear’s best-selling models, functions so smoothly.

In Older Japan Mr Collins writes of England as, In certain hard aspects of modern economic drive, England undoubtedly is—a huge, impersonal mill, in which the golden grain of human sympathy shines fitfully, and too often is ground under as the giant rollers revolve. But Mr Fallas writes, in “ The Wooden Pillow,” of Japan as she was in Loti’s day, before industrialism turned the old graces of conversation into practical business or war talk and the superfluous maidens into the factories as wageearners. His story, as seems to be beyond escape in the fiction of East and West, is that of the love of a European man and a Japanese girl, 0 Kaya San. The spirit of this pleasant, exotic work is set in the first pages when O Kaya San is informed that she is being sent from home to Yokohama to become the wife of an old man she has never met; “When told of this arrangement made by her father, she bowed many times, but could at first find only these clear words to say: ‘ Excuse me that I do not appear to be filled with happiness; it is only because of my grief at leaving this home,, my gracious parents and my dear younger sister.’ ” Mr Fallas writes with humour, knowledge and, one imagines, insight, of Japanese culture and character as they bloomed a few decades ago. Even if conditions are so altered to-day as to relate the study exclusively to Japan’s immediate past, it provides a quietly effective commentary upon phases of Japanese life that are apt to he forgotten while the naval and military cliques shout defiance at the world from Tokio.

A Scottish Farm In “ Farmer’s Boy,” John R. Allan has reconstructed the life of a small_ Scottish farm of pre-war days. He writes of a life that hqs now almost wholly passed away, but of which he cherishes _ many childhood memories. His book is not autobiography, hut neither is it wholly fiction; he has allowed his thoughts free play hut, fortunately, he has not allowed sentiment an equally free play, and there is a wholesomely astringent quality about the descriptions which has preseryed the vitality or the scene. He is neither a follower of the Kailyard School nor of George Douglas, the author of the “ House of Green Shutters,” but rather does he belong t;o the small band which is now endeavouring to lead a Scottish Renaissance in art and literature —not without some measure, of success. The book is a delightful one and to the prose added point is given by the black and white illustrations of Douglas Percy Bliss. One recognises in this book a greater reality than one is accustomed to meet in Ijooks about Scotland, and one encounters frequently the hard, dry humour which is so characteristically Scottish. It may be expected that the book will find many readers among older people, and it should also appeal strongly to whose who can recall their grandparents—the men and women who endeavoured to transplant in this part of the world the life which is here described. Philippine Love

“Forest Twilight” is the story of a race of people who, apparently, have retained their savage customs and still live by tribal lore, in spite of the growth of their country to at least nominal independence as a civilised State. The negrito pygmies are the only characters in Frank Dorn’s novel, and one’may forget, in its pages, that the Philippines are now, for all the visitor or white resident may see of them, Americanised. The author’s first interest, obviously, is with the life of the negrito.es, and he makes an accomplished survey of many of its aspects, such events us a hunt, a feast, a dance, and a storm providing him with opportunities for careful observation and good descriptive writing. The romantic story that is introduced to serve the requirements of fiction may he regarded as less than satisfactory. It is the stock situation of the ethnological romanticists, be their medium film or hook, of the girl, her two lovers, and a curse. Those, however, with an interest in places beyond their own shores and knowledge will welcome this unusual work for the information it contains.

The Author Frank Dorn was born at San Francisco in 1901, and graduated from West Point (U.S. Military Academy) in 1923 as an officer of field artillery. He has travelled widely on service and on leave, and during three years at the Philippine station became interested in the negritoes. He spent eight months living with or near these primitives in the mountains, studying their history and customs and translating 3000 words of their speech into English. He is now attached to the United States Military Attache at Peiping.

“ Second Thoughts ’’ One remembers Miss Le Bas’s first novel, “Castle Walk,” as pleasant and entertaining, but one may have only the haziest recollection of .its story and have forgotten even the heroine’s name. Her “ Second Thoughts ” comes into the sanie class of very readable romances, which catch the attention quite successfully for the few hours that are spent perusing them, and leave after a few months only a faint memory behind. It is a tale of a young woman, a novelist,_ who lives in London self-sufficiently with her old nurse. Then the placid, rather smug routine of her life is broken by several events. Her brother, who makes his presence felt in any place, comes home, and she meets two men who wish to marry her. Elizabeth, for such is the young

woman’s name, realises emotions and problems more urgent and perplexing than those that, with such easy discernment, she has put in her books.

Wild Moments Anne Duffield’s “Wild Memory” is a romance in this writer’s characteristic interpretation of that word, with a handsome and inscrutable Army major, a selfpossessed woman who cherishes a youthful dream of him. an impetuous and badmannered “ modern girl ” ns the principals, Egypt as the setting, and the appropriate company of polished adventurers, rabble and sheiks. The woman, Linda, has come to Egypt to the major’s beautiful and remote home, as the companion of his niece because of that persistent early memory. But she had not reckoned either that her charge would be so difficult, combining deceit and maliciousness with ill-breeding, or that her own affairs could be so complicated by love and passion. The author knows exactly what she is about, however, even when her heroine loses her mature calm, and provides an ending that must be considered more reasonable than certain of the incidents in the novel. A Super-Spy

Mr Oppenheim is thoroughly at home in “The Spy Paramount,” and once more he is busy forecasting events. Those who remember the assiduousness with which he predicted war against Germany for several years prior to the outbreak of hostilities, and the almost amazing accuracy of his forecasts, may be inclined to hope that he is equally correct this time, for on this occasion his prediction is

for universal peace. His hero is a superspy who scorns the disguises and subtle ties of his kind of a previous generation, and, instead, moves among the highest political and diplomatic circles under no name but that with which he was baptised. His mission, it soon becomes apparent, is not the garnering of information which will put one nation in a position of paramountancy over its fellows, but the collation of evidence which will make every nation completely realise the futility of armed combat. Needless to say, hia inquiries cause him to walk very frequently in the shadow of an untimely end.

Twofold Task

Philip Tracey, known as Spike, will have been met before by some readers who like their mystery tales to be plausible and the characters articulate. In “A Most Immoral Murder” he places himself in a piquant situation by giving hospitality to a young woman whom the police of New York nave asked him to discover for them. The uncle of this girl has been killed in circumstances upon which she is reluctant to expound, and Spike’s task becomes two-fold, first to find out how the stamp-collector actually met his death, secondly to protect the girl, while he is doing so. from the tender mercies of the police. The record of his fulfilment of the tasks provides a more than usually pleasing story.

“ The Green Lantern ** The Honourable Bill, whose surname is Pallisier, is proceeding towards London, and dinner, when he finds a derelict car, the chauffeur dead, and every indication of a murder. Further down the road he picks up a young lady, and, incidentally, obtains a job to his liking. Joy Swinnerton’s brother Michael hag been seized by a band of miscreants —American gangsters who desire to revenge themselves upon hia father, who had brought some American crooks to a well-de-served “ hot seat.” Payment for hia release is demanded and procured, but in the meantime Japanese Secret Service men are looking for certain papers Michael had with him. Double-crossing among the gangsters and pure luck for Bill solve the problem. “ Call In the Yard "

In this hook David Hume gives us three stories, in each of which Sanderson of Scotland Yard does some brilliant work. There is in the episodes just that touch of the authentic which makes the story possible. A hidden criminal, whose methods are eo ruthless that he has made himself a power even among the most reckless and daring of the bad men, appears in two of them. In the third, we have something approaching an act of unselfishness of unusual quality, but in which daring of the real sort is necessary to bring about a very desirable end. V. V. L.

Marathon Fiction One of the characters in Thomas Wolfe’s "Of Time and the River” tries desperately to read all the books in the world. Joseph Sell, reviewing this novel in the Manchester Evening News, remarks that now and again one feels that its author is trying to write them all. The vast scale of Thomas Wolfe’s opus impresses all the British reviewers, and depresses some of them. A. G. Macdonell, in the Observer, declares that each page in this new book is a Sargasso Sea of words. The deeper you push the ship of your mind into it the more it becomes enmeshed by the sluggish tangle of seaweed, and it moves more and more slowly as it struggles on, until at last it comes to a complete standstill in the stranglehold. James Hilton, writing, in the Daily Telegraph, considers the whole novel three times as long as it need have been if any discriminating selective, mind had gone over it with a blue pencil.