BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3773, 6 July 1926, Page 74

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

IN REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA. “If To-day Have No To-morrow.” By Olive Gilbreath. (Cloth, 7s Od net.) London: John Murray. The authoress has chosen a good title for her novel of revolutionary Russia—apparently a first production. The book shows familiarity with Russia, and the pictured it gives of Russian social life during the revolutionary year, 1917, and of the unsettlement and increasing hardships and uncertainties are just what one would expect. But the story cannot be taken as a real contribution to our knowledge of Russian revolution. It is written from the foreigner’s point of view; there iB little attempt to see things from within. The narration is somewhat tedious; the author’s style lacks clarity, and when she seeks impressiveness it becomes over-laboured and over-coloured. And her chief characters fail to be interesting, the women especially lack substantiality. The central character is Michael Acar, of a family originally Scotch, but settled for 200 years in Russia. During this period the young Acars had been sent to Britain to be educated, and had chosen—with one or two exceptions —British wives, so that they remained essentially British. But Michael had n Russian great-grandmother, from whom perhaps some of his characteristics

might be derived. At the opening of the story he has inherited the family manufacturing business and landed estates, liis brother is on the Gallidian front, and his 17-year-old sister (who soon passes out of the story) is with him at their country home some distance from Moscow. Then the authoress takes us back to the beginning of the year, and shows us Michael in London, where lie meet 3 and falls in love with Adrienne, of mixed French and Georgian parentage, who is of a sylphlike and spiritual loveliness, and sings divinely. “She should not sing,” says Michael on first seeing her. “She lias the art of being. It is enough.” But with the revolution threatening to reduce him to poverty Michael feels he cannot ask Adrienne to marry him, nor can be entertain the thought of her encountering the dangers of the country to which he feels still bound. And with something of Slavonic instability he suffers himself to be drawn into marriage with Trina, one of the two daughters of Count Savin, who lias beauty, but is antipathetic to him in character and standards. Their incompatible married life soon comes to an end. Later, Michael finds Adrienne in Siberia, but she is dying of fever, and does not know him. It is in vision that she appears, and tells him: “Nothing separates us now. I am young with the beautiful indelibility of death.” HAITIAN SAVAGERY. “The Goat without Horns.” By Beale Davis. (Paper, 2s net.) London: Stanley Paul & Co. This is a story of white people in contact with black savagery in Haiti, and “the goat without horns” is the native title of a child offered up for sacrifice according to the primitive barbaric rites which are reported to have been revived under native rule. Felix Blaine, a still young American, who during the Great War has become a power in the financial world, goes for a month’s holiday to Haiti, as unfamiliar ground where he will be safely out of business turmoil. At an entertainment given on board an American war-ship he meets Madame Therese Simone, the most beautiful and fascinating woman he has ever seen, who, as he has already learned, is not received in Port-au-Prince society. No one is very clear about the reasons for her exclusion, but there are queer stories about her, and it is rumoured that she has black blood in her; though her appearance and manners give the lie to such stories. It is a case of love at first sigjjt with Blaine, but as their acquaintance progresses he finds there is some mystery about her not accounted for bv what he has learned of her history—that she is the daughter of a plantation owner and spent most of her youth with him in Europe, that coming to the island after his death to arrange her affairs she married a Frenchman who was murdered the day of their wedding, and that she has since unaccountably remained on the island. Then one night in the bush he stumbles on a concourse of natives holding their horrible voodoo orgies, and in the painted half-naked priestess who slaughters two game-cocks recognises the woman he loves.

Later Therese explains to him how through her own curiosity and the agency of her old native nurse she has become enslaved bv voodoo arts. When Blaine saw her as she was under the influence of hypnotism and drugs and has no recollection of what he did. but she has learned that it is designed bv the voodoo priests that she shallfunction at the supreme voodoo rite when a white baby shall be “the goat withont horns.” She has no hone of beine able to escape from the island, and begs Blaine to go himself before. the net is drawn round him. The remainder of the storv describes Blaine’s finally successful efforts to rescue her, delayed by the trickerv of the blacks. A massacre of political prisoners bv the native president and a consequent revolt with scenes of frightful blood-thirstiness in the streets of the capital are final horrors. The storv, which is naturally told, certainlv gives the impression that Haiti is a country to be avoided at all costs. TOLD BY A DOC. “Fugleman the Foxhound.” By Harding Cox. (Cloth, 78 6d net.) London: John Lane (the Bodlev Head). Animal stories are plentiful in our days, and it is nothing new to make a dog tell his own storv, hut the construction of “Fugleman the Foxhound” is in some respects novel, not altogether advantageously. A brief introduction tells how the writer encountered a natureloving recluse, who, through living much with animals, has developed the powers of understanding their mental processes, and making them understand what he wishes them to do. It is direct telepathy rather than anv form of speech or system of signs that enables this mutual understanding. This is the most feasible explanation of mental contact between animals and humans, up to a certain' point, but it hardly suffices to account for a circumstantiallytold history dealing with human affairs as well as with dog experiences. As in pretty well all animal stories, the animals, despite the realistic way in which their adventures are told, are really humans in animal forirt. To avoid this is the well nigh insuperable difficulty of the animal story. The narrative is supposed to be “sensed” to Morgan Woodd, the recluse, by an ancient foxhound, Fugleman, who imparts it to the author. There is plenty of dog character, and individuality is given to dog dialogues by making

the dogs from Ireland speak witli a brogue, while a London bulldog talks Cackney-wise. The troubles of puppyhood, dog fights, dog shows, and the great exeats of foxhunts are described with animation. It is a pity that the author has woven a human love story of no agreeable kind with the tale of dog experiences. In this the actors are the Master of Hounds, familiarly called “Toby” on account of his initials, his wife, and his niece by marriage, Cynthia. It reads like a bit of propaganda against the retention of prohibition of marriage between persons connected by marriage but not by blood. The story closes with a pathetic tragedy of dog fidelity. AN OUT-OF-DOORS GIRL. “Robin.” By Mary Grant Bruoe. (Cloth, 3s Cd net.) * Australia: Cornstalk Publishing Company (per Angus and Robertson, Ltd.) Mary Grant Bruce can always lie relied upon to write for young people a clean, wholesome book, which, while crammed with adventure and thrill, will in no w’ise injure her readers. She has a number of such volumes to her credit, not least among which is “Robin,” the story of a girl of to-day who finds life sweet and happy in her home in Australia. Aged 10, and noted for a shock of red hair above a white face, Robin is an out-of-doors young person who dresses habitually in riding strides and leggings, and who is as expert in the bush as a man. We first meet her at the head of an escapade at school, her high spirits making her the ringleader in mischievous circles, and later, on her mother’s ranch at home, where most of her adventures happen. Her palship with Barry Lane, who at first despises her for being “only a girl,” but later learns to respect her whole-heartedly, her rescue of the poor little woman who eventually saves her life, her fighting the flames in a bush fire, and all her other many daring feats make a book well worth reading, and one which will be appreciated by all young people with a taste for the healthy out of doors.