Lancastrian Heroics Again

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1164, 3 November 1917, Page 7 (Supplement)

Lancastrian Heroics Again

**• I- anctlstcr again is surprise at her enduring appetite for heroics. But w hen we have ceased a little to ISnbsrJß, wonder at that side of things we must, if we are honest, admit her technical growth. Time was when we knew her for a mere amateur dabbler in the pages of weekly journals. To-day she is a finished novelist. She has definitely mastered her craft. If she could master also her sentimentalised vision, she might implant herself permanently in the history of colonial liction. Unfortunately she is hopelessly wedded to heroes and figures of romance. "Fool Divine" has vigour and surprising "go," but carries about as definite and lasting conviction as a brand-new celluloid collar. Before you can appreciate it at all, you must put on her romance-rimmed spectacles. Do it, however, and the book will enthral you from the start. Anne Gascoyne is dying—and knows it. Her husband has been dead two months. What more natural, then, before she goes finally over the bourne than to call for her newborn son, and placing her lips to his ear instead of his mouth, to leave him this final message: "if you want to be a rebel, be a rebel, son. . . . I'll be eternally ashamed of you if you don't somehow contrive to do your jousting alone." "Jousting," you see, for a start. Heroics and knight-errantry on the very first page. And after that, why, who expects the matter-of-fact? The child must grow into a h«ro—of the smashing, rebellious kind, of course—must meet with extraordinary adventures, must be as handsome as he is brave, and as unconventional as he is tender and dashing. You will not be disappointed. They are all there—the unhealthy, pen-driv-ing, stay-at-home hypocrite, the Kiplingesque seacaptains and "has-beens," the gambler, the plotter, the lady whom to meet is to ponder over and worship for ever. And there is one feature quite special and distinctive. The hero seeks adventure, but by none of your beaten, dusty paths. Yellow fever is the foeman for him—an adversary so terrible that when he offers his body for voluntary infection the doctors merely gasp! But that is just about as much as you onght to know without going to Cuba for yourself. Pocket your pride in probabilities, and go.forth with the "fool divine." (Hodder and Stuugbton, through Whitcombe and Tombs.)