“The Georgian House”

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17911, 15 October 1932, Page 13

“The Georgian House”

MR. Frank Swinnerton, .in “The Georgian House,” proves that a novelist who made his name in prewar days can handle the post-war world as easily as his younger contemporaries, and with more breadth and humor. In the novel, which is having a big sale in London, Mr. Swinnerton draws his characters in lines which are at once firm and gentle. He does not fling his people in the face of the public. Imperceptibly, they grow into the reader’s imagination until they almost exclusively occupy it. More than any of his contemporaries he has the power to make characters till nut. In “The Georgian House,” he sets two chattering women in a village street, to be the chorus through whose voices one shall hear the beginning ot his tale. This is an old device, used by dozens of dramatists for the communication of past history, but Mir. Swinnerton is not content to lot his chorus ladies be gramophone records; he endows them with bones and blood, and gives them life as vivid as that given to his principals. When he is content to tell us about his people, one is satisfied, but when lie begins to rumble a plot around, one stirs uneasily. One finds oneself remembering each of his people, but unable to remember the involutions of the plot.