NEW NOVELS

Southland Times, Issue 23652, 29 October 1938, Page 14

NEW NOVELS

THE SEAMY SIDE THE DAY WILL COME. By John Randolph Richards. Longmans, Green and Co., London. Price 7/6 net. Randall is one of those unpleasant persons who have received an increasing amount of attention' from English novelists in recent years* ‘ He is different from many of his kind, however, in that there is no false emphasis on pathological factors. We meet him first •when he arrives in Claringham to take up a position with a second-hand bookseller. Almost immediately he begins to betray himself in little ways that are, made visible only to the reader. The people with whom he is mixing know nothing of his complete selfishness, or of his trick of. putting a rare edition under his jacket and selling it later for his own profit. But these lapses have their proper place in the pattern of his behaviour, and could Seem to be nothihg worse than a fondness for plunder. We already know, of course, that he has deserted a girl in Bournemouth, after betraying her; but it is not until he meets attractive Muriel Clements and sets out deliberately to seduce her that we begin to see him as somebody quite evil and detestable.' It is harder to excuse him because, for all his lasciviousness, his pulse is cool; : he knows how to wait his time, and can turn aside from passion in the of worldly advancement. He abandons Muriel for Julia Manners, who is the wife of an unsuccessful bookseller, ;but has money of her own, and is physically desirable. With a quiet but firm control of his affairs he gets into the Manners household, puts the business on a . new and paying basis—With due attention to his own pocket—and makes love to Julia. When Manners threatens to become troublesome Randall arranges a street accident, and is free to marry the widow. So far he seems to have been master of his destiny. But the pattern is growing complex, and when a letter arrives unexpectedly from the first gin he had deserted he makes a false step. A sudden hatred of the woman .Who seems to stand in the way of his success betrays him, and in allowing his true nature to take command he brings his bright new world crashing about his ears. The climax must not be described; it provides a powerful ending for a book that has been carried step by step with admirable artistic control. Randall is hateful in every way; yet the reader does not altogether hate him. Quite early it becomes possible to see him in the centre of the web he is spinning for his own destruction; it is impossible not to pity one who, in spite of his spiritual inadequacy, seems to believe so confidently in his own mastery of fate. And this clear view of the man is wholly the work of the novelist, who has created no monster—even though his story, in its implacable course, has much that is Ugly and repellent. “The Day Will Come” is not a pleasant book; but it is an extremely good one.