BOOKS REVIEWED

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 3, 25 March 1927, Page 10

BOOKS REVIEWED

TOO MUCH NOISE. YfR. CHESTERTON was once a poet, and still can rouse himself to the labour of poetry and the reward. But his latest book of verses is nearly all of it in a rather tiresome vein of fluent rhetoric, which Mr. Chesterton finds so easy that one imagines him conducting telephone-conversations in spouts of verse. Mr. Chesterton’s rhetoric needs always to be subdued to the hard service of reason; lately, in both prose and verse, the service has been but lax. “The Queen of Seven Swords” is full of poems in which it is difficult to hear any sense

at all, the resounding phrases are so loud. Nobody is more remarkably successful than he, when he dominates his own gifts, and nobody is more painfully dull to read when he lets them run shouting and capering away with him. “The Queen of Seven Swords.” G. K. Chesterton. Sheed and Ward. Belloc v. Wells Phases of the battle: (1) Mr. Wells’s famous Outline; (2) Mr. Belloc’s articles in certain newspapers; (3) Mr. Wells’s pamphlet “Mr. Belloc Objects”; (4) Mr. Belloc’s pamphlet “Mr. Belloc Still Objects,” to be followed, by (5) Mr. Belloc’s “Companion to Mr. Well’s ‘Outline of History.’ ” The little book before us is No. 4, in which Mr. Belloc retorts to Mr. Wells’s “excited, popular, crude attack, full of personal insult and brawling.” Without going into the rights and wrongs of the controversy, really important one, impossible to sum up in a few words, it may be said that Mr. Belloc’s little book is an excellent example of his deliberate and powerful controversial style. It is in controversy that Mr. Wells gets into difficulties, but it is is in controversy that Mr. Belloc finds his element. To watch him moving with a sort of massive agility in it is a pleasure. “Mr. Belloc Still Objects.” Hilaire Belloc. Sheed and Ward. The Lady in the Case A S readers of “The Owl Taxi,” and other books of his know, Mr. Hulbert Footner tells a good detective ya.rn. In “Madame Storey,” his latest book, he tells three, all of them in his best manner. Rosika Storey is advertised on the jacket as a “super-detective,” which she is not; but she is an entertaining one, though rather reticent. She advertises herself as a. “psychological” detective, which she is not, though delightfully shrewd. Her redhaired assistant is unobtrusive, her monkey, Giannino, is an adjunct as happily eccentric as Holmes’ cocaineneedle and tobacco-slipper, and with admirable ingenuity she contrives to escape marriage in the last few pages. The further adventures of Rosika, Beba, and Giannino cannot be published too soon. “Madame Storey,” Hulbert Footner. W. Collins and Sons and Co., Ltd. Back to Alaska FEW writers are more at home among the mountains and torrents, Indians and trappers, gold-seekers and traders of Northern Canada and Alaska than Mr. Ridgwell Cullum. One has only to look at the imposing list of previous novels about them, fronting'’the title page of “The Candy Man” to realise this. The familiar ‘ scenes and characters are here again, but there is an unusual twist to this story of the queer revenge of a prospector’s partner, Bill Bradford, upon James Garnet, a lay missionary, who robbed the miner of wealth when it lay within his grasp. That Bradford should become a millionaire is natural enough, but even though the rise of Garnet, alias Julian Vastella, to the rank of Prime Minister, is a trifle steep, the plot is diverting enough to excuse its improbabilities. “The Candy Man,” Ridgwell Cullum. Cecil Palmer, London. Our copy comes from Robertson and Mullens, Ltd., Melbourne. Marriage on Probation. Meg Mellor, a charming but unsophisticated authoress, the ultimate and only result of marriage seemed certain to be suffering. When Frank Hendon, a brilliant novelist, came along, and fell head over heels in Jove with the winsome Meg, his proposal of marriage was not accepted. She agreed, however, to take him “on probation,” and for a year the pair, chaperoned by the admirable Bicky, otherwise Mrs. Bickersteath, Meg’s old nurse, lived at Avonhead, a beautiful village at Surrey. The experiment was successful, and after many interesting happenings, some of them comical. Meg and Frank were married and '’tnniiv efto" “The Veil e-t Glamou*. Clive Arden Hodder and Stoughton. Our copy from Robertson and Mullens Ltd., Sydney.

About a Nice Girl. Irony can be too concentrated, just as there can be too much detail in a picture, and so it has proved with “The Odyssey of a Nice Girl,” Ruth Suckow’s second novel. Miss Suckow has tried to etch too finely the story of an average small-town American girl, and, to mix the metaphor, the result has been that one cannot see the wood for the trees, which are the reactions of the girl at the various stages of her career. One could see humdrum marriage stalking through the novel from the beginning, and that made the detail a little tiresome. Nevertheless, as a description of ordinary life in an ordinary place, the novel is to be recommended. The only trouble has been that, in the description of the career of Marjorie Schoessel as she wanders through the horrid mazes of an elocutionary training, there is a little too much of Marjorie Schoessel. “The Odyssey of a Nice Girl.” Ruth Suckow. Jonathan Cape, London.