New Fiction

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17947, 26 November 1932, Page 13

New Fiction

TRANSLATED from the French, * “The Night Candles,” by Rene Roy, is a beautifully written book, It records the spiritual pilgrimage of a young man who was blinded in the war, who passed through the gulfs of despair, recovered his will and his faith, went back to his studies, is now a State engineer of bridges and waterways, and fs able to say, “I know of secret beauty in the earth, far beyond the sight of the keenest eye.” Everyone who enjoyed Vicki Baum ’s “Grand Hotel” will enjoy Gina Kans? “Luxury Liner,” a novel about a trans-Atlantic crossing in a German liner. The story begins with a German doctor who obtains n post on board a liner bound for New York in order to pursue a runaway wife. As ho makes his rounds of the vessel one becomes acquainted with passengers and crew, and soon Miss Kaos is weaving a close pattern out of the lives of a score of cosmopolitan characters. One is held fascinated as she keeps us in suspense with the glitter and dash of her display. Mrs Belloc Lowndes gives us a plain tale in “Jenny Newstead.” Air. Newstead, husband of Jenny, is taken from the rogue’s gallery of actual fact, and the fictitious Jenny is described as “an unrecorded instance” of his industrious application to polygamy. Newstead married ladies of small property and simple faith, leaving them either dead or disillusioned with the maximum speed. Jenny is a carefully drawn picture of Ins natural prey. Hhe had £SOO and no doubts. The story of her desertion and her subsequent romance amid the villas of Gilpin’s Green is well told.