RECENT FICTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22830, 14 March 1936, Page 4

RECENT FICTION

" See How They Run." By Jerrard TlckeU. (Heinemann.) " Tho Silver Fountain." By Cecilia Willoughby. (Cape.) V Canon to Right of Them." By Bruce Marshall. (Gollancz.) " Evolution of James." By Cherry Vcheync (Methuen.) " Keep Away from Water." By Alice Campbell. (Crime Club.) " The Wingrave Case." By Peter Luck, (Jenkins.)

" Boston Belle Meets Murder." By J. C. Lenchan. (Jenkins.) (Each 75.)

" See How They Run " This book is the product of observation at first hand and second-hand, and a capable synthesis of the experiences. Mr Tickell's immediate fiction mentors are plainly visible in his writing, but not obtrusive—Eric Linklater, Ernest Hemingway, possibly Richard Aldington. Linklater provides the picaresque, Hemingway in a modified way, the unadorned dialogue, Aldington, perhaps, the hopeful breath of high romance existing yet in a world given over to dull amours and depression. Mr Tickell appears, however, to have been his own' traveller. He knows tome places well, though he does not write at length about them. He seems to have returned to the British Isles not unbelieving that Greac Britain still has a destiny, and Britons must work for it. For all what some people might condemn as its casual " modernity," " See How They Run" is a healthy, hopeful book. Only the people who do not recognise that clear sight is the best aid to good vision (there are many of them) will be misled into thinking that this novel is flippant 01 disillusioned. The story is of two young people, Nicola Lenke and Peter Conroy, who do not always know their minds, but face life cheerfully. Nicola is the daughter of an Austrian gentleman, who has been rewarded for good service in a war his country lost with a clerkship in the Pensions Department. He sends her to school in England, because Austria and himself seem equally impoverished and without future. Peter, with the connivance of an amiable aunt, starts off to see the world, which he does quite thoroughly, even touching at Auckland for a few lines, on £IOO or so. When In.- returns to England Nicola is a guest of his aunt. He is seized of two ambitions, to marry her and to go into Parliament, end the main theme of the novel from this point is to show us which he achieves. There is some agreeable character-draw-ing in this book, mainly on the sentimental side of the sheet, and Mr Tickell's understanding of Vienna, no longer gay, is as assured as his comprehension of modern people. _ Perhaps as the best drawing, one might put side by side his cutting portrait of the egocentric Austrian rjobleinan and his snowscapes. " See How They Run " is a novel that has the makings of good sales in it. Yorkshire Realisip

In the life history of the ordinary man, or woman, the highest verisimilitude does not always make for most memorable beauty. That is why one enjoys the technical excellence arid craftsmanship of Miss Cecilia Willoughby'e latest novel, "The Silver Fountain," without having any vividly pleasurable memories of the story or its characters. But real life is inclined to be like.that. Miss Willoughby is fortunate in her locale because she knows the ridings of Yorkshire and their people so well. She gives glimpses of a sort of dialectic savagery which still seems to exist in some parts, and unfolds the history of Roger Mary Fayne with a nicely distinctive and refreshingly direct style that appears to spurn every temptation to make life a little less plain and drab for the struggling young couple. " The Silver Fountain" exhibits a close affinity to " Mellory's Yard," Miss Willoughby's last novel, but it displays rather more competence and ease. She tackles the chief crux of a Yorkshire story—dialogue—fearlessly and unwaveringly, and as a result the atmosphere of the book is .never less than convincing.

Concerning Canons Mr Marshall is placed by his publishers under the almost humiliating need to explain that' his novel, " Canon to Right of Them " is not intended to be blasphemous. On the contrary, he says, he believes most strongly in religion, and in beauty, too, and his desire is to point the truth about beauty and godliness. It is by paradox that he aims at doing so, for there is little that could be called beautiful in the main incidents in the novel, in which a young man gets into a scrape with two ladies from the revue and a semi-lunatic, and three clergymen are arrested for creating a disturbance at a music hall. And it is only when he is very tolerably drunk that the most kindly cleric in the book is in a position to see the real beauty of a situation he would at any other time condemn, not altogether wrongly, as immoral. But if Mr Marshall's results, though not his motives, in view of his assurance, may be in doubt at times, there is no question about his ability to write entertainingly. Those who are not on the side of the angels will find his story witty, pertinent and sometimes broadly rollicking. Such, as it happens, are not the people whom he needs to arouse, thus obliquely, to a respect for other people's individuality, and a recognition that the gates of heaven are wide, and the paths to them many. And the people who arc in need of this instruction are less likely to recognise the author's appeal to them than to attack his book with evangelical fury. " Evolution of James " We first meet James Dyee as a modjl of respectability, rebuking his so'i for not very serious delinquencies with harsh and rigid austerity. Then Miss Veheyne allows us to study the evolution of this grim parent from his earliest years in the slums. Following 'his extraordinary and discreditable adventures during his first two decades, the reader will not mistake her purpose, which is to show that, in the profound words of Longfellow, " things are not what they seem " —or not always. Finally, James is called on to pay for the indiscretions of his youth, and does so like one of .Nature's gentlemen.

A Female Bodyguard " Keep Away from Water " derives its title from the advice given to one of its principals in the course of an anonymous threatening letter. The person to whom the letter is addressed, an elderly spinster of somewhat timid habits, has received such a number of threats jgainst her life by an unknown enemy that, in desperation, she advertises for a companion. That is where Sarah Mac Neill, an American girl of outstanding resource, enters the story. Sarah, in addition to providing moral support for her employer, brings an astute brain to bear on the problem of solving the identity of the person who has wrecked her nervous system. If, incidental to her investigations, she also discovers a husband for herself, who shall_ say that her labours are over-rewarded ?

Death of Mrs Wingrave In "The Wingrave Case," Peter Luck tells of a murder which brought an innocent man very near to the scaffold. Mrs Ramon Wingrave is a dipsomaniac, whose unbridled tongue is used to lash her highly-strung husband to fury. Every evening—and on no evening is she other than beastly drunk—she takes a bath. On two occasions she has been just saved from drowning. On a third she is found dead in her bath. Peter Ma«on has suggested to Ramon Wingrave that he should rid himself of his hateful wife by drowning her, and now everything seems to be over except the execution. The reader, however, forms a very shrewd idea of the identity of the culprit, and while hoping that justice will not miscarry, also desires that a good but careless man should not have to face the consequences of his act. The story is well told. Double Death Hector Warren, who has been a scoundrelly financier in the great tradition of fiction, is laid out in state in his pretentious home. While people are visiting the death chamber he is stabbed. This time he is really dead —the preposterous lie which he had decided to enact by assuming death has become his last lie on earth. " Boston Belle " Eraser, a superintendent of police, and others, undertake an .investigation, which reveals the motive for and manner of the murder, but neither they nor the readers of " Boston Belle Meets Death " will regret that they bring no case to tho courts. V. V. L.