READING FOR RELAXATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27274, 28 December 1949, Page 2

READING FOR RELAXATION

Literature

The Paradine Case. By Robert Hichens. Convoy Publications. 8s 6d. TUI Murder Do Us Part. By ,W, H. Lane Crauford. Ward, Lock. The Day After Tomorrow. By Montagu Scott. Hutchinson. 9s 6d. The Hour of Flight. By Stanley Moss. George Harrap. 7s 6d. TaU Pines in Paddington. By Charman Edwards. Ward, Lock.

Toby Scuffell. By Paul Capon. Ward, Lock.

Philippa. By Mrs Robert Henrey. J M. Dent and Sons. 9s 6d.

High Valley. By Charmian Clift and George Johnston. Angus and Robertson. 12s 6d.

Time For. Love. By F. E. Baily. Macdonald and Co. 8s 6d.

Dream Child. By A. C. Bailey. Macdonald. and Co. 8s 6d. A Stranger in My Midst. By Victor Ross. Hodder and Stoughton. 8s 6d. Dead Men s Shoes. By P. C. Wren. John Murray. 10s 6d. In the East My Pleasure. By Jalan Thompson. Andrew Dakers, Ltd. 8s 6d. Whispering Steel. •By Jerome Nicholas. Hodder and Stoughton. 8s 6d.

The Impossible Guest. By J. Jefferson Farjeon. Macdonald and Co. 8s 6d.

As Often As Not. By Susan French Herbert Jenkins. 8s 6d.

The Sheltered Flame. By Claire Ritchie. Hodder and Stoughton. 8s 6d. Pattern for a Scandal. By Dorothy Blewett, Australasian Publishing Company. 9s 6d.

Book Behind Film Mr Hichens’s The Paradine Case is undoubtedly one of his greatest successes, a fact which can be attested by the many thousands who a few months ago saw David Selznick’s film on which it was based. It is powerful drama, deeply emotional in many of its facets and marked by a lucidity in its mental analysis which increases its force tremendously. The reader will find it all too easy, despite the length of the book, to live with the main characters and to admire the frequent excursions into pure dialectics. Romance and Murder

The stout affirmation of love contained in the words Till Murder Do Us Part is symptomatic of Mr Crauford’s style throughout his latest book. Once again he presents romance of a most stimulating, kind, complete with mild-manner heroine, too complaisant herb and a villain with never a kind thought to his credit. Though this may hint of something in the nature of “ prescription as before,” that is no condemnation, fqr the author has found a large public avid for his particular type of fare, and this book is quite up to standard. German Scene

A fine study of life in Germany during the war, The Day After Tomorrow describes how the members of a family exist after poverty has reduced them from a Prussian glory to an almost ghost-like status. The effects of the war are treated calmly, without appeal to sentiment or resort to sentimentality. The contemporary English scene, too, is well depicted, again without any straining after effect. Nightmare Though it was doubtless essential for the purpose of giving force to the plot of The Hour of Flight that it should be peopled by unwholesome characters, it seems a pity, to have wasted good work on these unrelievedly drab and frequently despicable people. Their story is of an existence chosen deliberately and with a full knowledge that it can lead to nowhere. If there is a moral in the tale it is that the seamy side of life attracts only those who really wish to adopt it. The next book by this extensively travelled and very observant author should be well worth reading.

Loyalties in Conflict .Young Dr John O’Leary, who sets up his shingle in Paddington, finds happiness in mixed friendships and a certain financial success in that unlovely London district, but he has to wait a long time for romance to come his way. Then it arrives suddenly in the person of a beautiful blonde, rich and imperious, and his life becomes the centre of a mental maelstrom. After a tempestuous love affair which is less than creditable to either party, he is brought up sharply with the realisation that he must make an irrevocable decision. Post-war Problem The difficulties facing Toby Scuffell upon demobilisation three years after V-Day have been shared by many thousands, but few can have shared his determination to become a misanthrope. Once again, however, intentions and performance do not take a parallel course, and after rejecting the advances of a woman whose aggressiveness could have been put to less base uses, he falls in love with a girl considerably his junior. His integrity is put to so severe a test that the happiness of more than three people is involved. The Path of True Love

The principal bar to true love encountered by Philippa Dale and Johnny Fairchild in Philippa is based on the social standards of an earlier generation. In the case of Philippa’s mother the social code amounts almost to a mania, and her rather ridiculous adherence to its forces the young lovers into desperate counter measures. Romance in Tibet

Though High Valley cannot in all honesty be classed as great literature, the collaborators in its production achieve merit, in these days of bizarre but authentic travel, in conjuring up an ancient race in the wild fastnesses of Tibet. They give colour and verisimilitude by attributing to these somewhat outlandish people many of the proved idiosyncracies, common to the surrounding countries, notably a pathetic belief in their racial invincibility, their xenophobia, their disregard of personal hygiene and their unreasoning faith in their degraded priests.

Brave Experiment In this prosaic, materialistic age Mr Baily has dared to set his latest romance, Time for Love, against a backdrop of court intrigue in a mythical kingdom, but he makes the experiment and to his credit emerges successfully from it. Insubstantial Plot

Though the employment agency had warned Meg Grahame somewhat mysteriously that she might meet difficulties in her new post as a governess, it came as a shock for her to discover that her charge existed only in the pitifully deluded and highly neurotic imagination of her employers, their onlv offspring, arriving very late in their lives having failed to survive. It must have taken courage almost amounting to desperation for the author of Dream Child to have built a story upon this wholly fantastic foundation. Fantastic Scene

In the cosmopolitan unreality of Singapore it is not inappropriate for Peter Truscott, the narrator of A Stranger in My Midst, to be a scarcely credible amateur crime investigator. Instead of orthodoxly imposing the strength of his will-power on the criminals, bis mind becomes strangely receptive to their thoughtprocesses and to an almost mesmeric influence which they can exert even from a distance. This condition in Truscott. allied to a form of second sight which cannot *be rated very highly, will make readers despair of him. Friends Return

The second omnibus volume of Major Wren’s short stories, Dead Men’s Boots, will be a source of great delight for the present young and virile generation, in spite of the radio and the aeroplane, two inventions which post-dated this author’s stirring tales of the Foreign Legion. The present collection of these tales of great heroism and abject cowardice, generosity and avarice, honesty and crime will have an especial appeal to the oldsters, who will rejoice most heartily at the return

A Selection Of Fiction

of Beau Geste and his brothers, not to mention that unblushing liar, McSnortt, fountain of quite incredible knowledge. For these and their contemporaries carved a special niche in the minds of thousands who will welcome a chance of renewing the acquaintance. Foreign Affairs Away from family ties—in many cases for the first time—and posted for duty in the romantic East where duty was frequently light, it was not unnatural that the British soldier should cast admiring eyes on strange women. This then is the situation dealt with by J. Alan Thompson, who himself a poet, attacks the task with a poet’s intensity. His hero loves his wife and child in England and loves another man’s wife in the East. The question whether after this experience the young man can return to the life he left is answered in a dramatic and tragic manner. In the East My Pleasure is something more than a work of fiction. It crystallises a situation bred of war, recognised by most, and ignored, in the main, by all. War-time Secret

A meeting with a white rabbit which has green ears and a magenta-coloured posterior brings Bill Anstruther into close association with murder and the mysterious ways of the British MI. The subsequent spy-hunt is remarkable chiefly for the pace at which it is carried out and Anstruther’s directness of reasoning, despite his continual assertions of obtuseness. True to Name

The word “ impossible,” as applied to Mr Far jeon’s The Impossible Guest, is an adequate but not unkindly intended one-word criticism. Two spinsters who unexpectedly inherit a castle, but have insufficient funds to maintain it, fall back on the timehonoured device of providing accommodation for paying guests, but great is their consternation on finding that their first client, during his first few hours, has been ousted by a kind of reincarnated knight complete with an ancient but flamboyant vocabulary. This impact of the present upon a period of over seven centuries ago is rich in its potentialities, and Mr Farjeon gives full rein to his imagination in exploiting them.

Romance of To-day / It is no condemnation, but rather a commendation, to describe As Often As Not as an old-time romance brought up to date. One has no doubt as to whom Felicia will marry after love has taken its traditional side excursions, but a distinctly modern note is sounded in her up-to-date practicalness and her free but rarely vulgar indulgence in the contemporary phrase. Her uncle, a peer, is still living in the 1914-18 war period, but he would be a lovable figure in any era. This is a refreshing book for the quiet hour.

A Family Tale For years Cecily Elliott had kept house for her brothers, and it was not till her reign was challenged by Stephen’s beautiful sophisticated fiancee that the course of the pleasant little household was upset. This is a charming, witty romance which will earn Claire Ritchie, a newcomer to the ranks Df novelists, a host of friends.

How It Happens Pattern a Scandal is a novel of life in a small country town in Victoria. It is a very readable tale, if somewhat light in texture. The heroine, who never appears in person, is a young artist, and niece and assistant to the local schoolmaster. Her breach of the social conventions, which is becoming steadily more evident to the eye. sets the little town by the ears. That is the “pattern for a scandal.” The picture of small-town life is well done but Miss Blewett has written a playwright’s novel. Her technique is essentially of the stage. And, although her women are true and well drawn, her men are not so good. But as a first novel this is a decidedly workmanlike effort. Miss Blewett will bear watching.