BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3803, 1 February 1927, Page 74

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

A WARTIME NOVEL. “Derision.” By Charman Edwards. (Cloth, 7s 6d net.) London: Ward, Lock and Company. Far the strongest portions of this novel are those that illustrate the war fever of the early days of the Great War; the subsequent awakening to the meaning of the conflict, and the scenes at the front. Here there is a powerful realisation expressed in memorable phraseology. And the effect is to produce a loathing for war, and a fierce resentment against the false patriotism and the money greed that inflamed it, the supine ignorance, apathy, and prejiidices that allow the fuel to be piled up in readiness for a chance "spark to kindle, and the deceptions and tyrannies inseparable from prosecuting a life-and-death conflict. The story in, itself is in no way notable; the characterisation is somewhat weak and wavering, and there is a good deal of the conventional in the plot, and indeed in some of the characters. The central character,. Dr David Crewys, has an irritating propensity for doing just the wrong thing; the kind of thing that no man of his intelligence and character would be likely to do. But, of course, his lapses from reason go to the making of the story. The narrative opens, a few years before the war, when Dr Crewys, aged 28, is a hard-worked and devoted

East End practitioner. A working man, one of his patients-, dies, leaving behind him an orphan child, a little girl of 11. The doctor, struck with little Joan Pitt’s intelligence and refinement, assumes the guardianship of her, and sends her to a good boarding school. Seven years later Joan has developed into a charming and highly educated young lady, who blends simplicity and child-like frankness with a maturity of thought and language remarkable in a girl of 18. Dr Crewys consigns her to the care of his cousin Muriel Sale, a Circe or Vivien brought up-to-date, and as Joan expresses a desire to do war work, allows her to take a position under Captain Graymar Sheldon, a handsome libertine of whom he has’ sufficient knowledge to have put him on his guard. Joan, resenting a deception Dr Crewys had practised in the matter of her guardianship, holds aloof from him, and the seductions of Muriel prove too powerful for his rectitude and reason. Under a sense of obligation he marries her, to discover after some months that she has tricked him doubly. In a fury of disgust and disillusionment he abandons her and the profession through which he could do best service to his country, and enlists as a private. Joan, meanwhile, has become the wife of Captain Sheldon’ who promptly wearies of her after marriage. In the end the opportune deaths of Sheldon and Muriel enable Crewys and Joan to be happily united. But the. plot outline is no criterion of the merit of a novel whose substantial interest consists in its illuminative treat-, ment of war psychology and its grim picturing of things done behind the fighting lines that do not find their wav into the new spapers, nor into war stories bv the stay-at home sentimentalist.

A CHIVALROUS LOVER.

“The Man Who Stood Alone.” By Paul I l ent. (Cloth: 7s 6d net.) London: ard, Lock and Company.

This novel, without literary distinction of any sort, has qualities of plot. and sentiment that make for wide popularity. The hero, Robert Sefton, after serving in the Great War, inherits from an uncle the old manor house and village of Sefton, with wide lands surroundin'*. In popular belief a curse is attached to ownership of the manor. Wishing to develop his estates, he allows his sweetheai t s father to form a company, and encourages people to buy shares in it. Through the dishonesty o’f the the scheme fails, and the shareholders, who include numbers of the poorer people of Sefton, lose their monev. Sefton insists on screening the swindler and absconder Lynd for the sako of his daughter. Declaring that he cannot allow the name of the father of the woman he loves to be blackened, he quixotically refuses to clear himself while Betty Lynd, as bent on refusin'* his sacrifice of himself, declares that she cannot remain engaged to a man bearin'* the burden of her father’s guilt. Here is an impasse, but subsequent dramatic developments break down Betty’s resolve, befton is put on his trial and’acquitted, but he suffers loss of reputation, and the villagers, disappointed in the verdiet mob him, smash all the windows of tlm manor house, and wound Sefton himself. But Sefton’s devotion of himself to make restitution and the evidence he <*ives of his earnestness by working as a labourer on the land, gradually break down suspicion and animosity. Before the happy conclusion is reached, both lovers have exciting qnd terrifying experiences to go through, but finally Sefton’s name is cleared, and all is well with them.

PRETTY AND SENTIMENTAL. “The Silence of the Hills.” Bv Cecil Adair. (Paper, 2s net.) London: Stanley Paul. Sweetly pretty ” is about the briefest phrase by which to characterise Cecil Adair s fiction. It is Victorian rather than Georgian in its choice of themes and its sentiment; it bears little, resemblance to real life, and is calculated to please readers who like stories that represent things as they would have them to be rather than as they are. I he present story in its prettiness refinement, idealism, weakness of characterisation, and general artificiality is just like the rest of Cecil Adair’s fiction —only more so. On it may be that i epctition makes her fiction more cloving the more of it one reads. The main action of the present story takes place in Southern France amid the romantic scenery that Miss Adair usually chooses for the background of her stories. Here the heroine Lucia, one of the lovely, precocious children one is familiar with in Muss Adair s books, has for a few weeks the companionship of Blaise, a handsome, spirited schoolboy, some vears older than herself. Each treasures the memory of the other, but when they meet again many years later Lucia holds herself as bound to Captain Claud Cunningham, who had sought her in marriage believing that his first wife had been long dead. The beautiful, soulless woman he had married in youthful infatuation had made his life wretched, and the South Africanf War had severed them. Just-as the ceremony uniting Claud -and Lucia has been performed the former wife, Sonia, appears and claims Claud as her husband. The developments of the plot from this stage are along the usual lines of sentimental fiction. The Great War provides a way of escape for Claud and Blaise alike from brooding over disappointed hopes. Finally Sonia on her deathbed confesses

that Lucia, not she, is the legal wife of Claud, for she was a married woman when she went through the wedding ceremony with him. So the dying Claud’s last days are made happy, and then a new life of unalloyed happiness opens for the two lovers naturally destined for one another.