BOOK OF THE WEEK

Taranaki Daily News, 8 September 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

EMOTION AND ITS CAUSES

(By

U.S.)

“Breakfast in Bed.” by Sylvia Thompson. William Heinemann Ltd., London. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth.

By ingenious and exceedingly readable devices Miss Thompson has gathered around the fact of Lady Nicholson having breakfast in bed, descriptions of the life and emotions of all who directly or indirectly have a share in maintaining the comfort of “her ladyship,” a “nervous woman who had been careful for 58 years not to get overtired.” Primarily the book is a chapter in the lives of Sir Frederick Nicholson, Blanche, his wife, and Clare his daughter. But 'around them are contacts with all sorts of folk, including Mark Petre, Clare’s lover, and characters that range from Cockney workers only just “outside the dole” to lovers of high art and other rather precious people. Sir Frederick and his lady are .rather fine. Pompous, with an undying belief that in the inscrutable wisdom of Providence there is a real difference in the make-up of the aristocrat as compared with “the classes,” they are still capable of much devotion to what they consider their duties to society. The story opens at the time when post-war taxation was making the way hard for the family with more pride than funds, and . the introduction of some of the workingclass characters is due to regrettable reductions in the permanent domestic staff of the Nicholson household. The characterisation is very clever. The grades of society in the servants rooms, for instance, are shown with perception and just the touch of caricature that gives the pictures sharpness. The same may be said of the description of the working-class families. Lily and George Cashmore are living folk. Their chief troubles were the usual ones of trying to make small wages coyer increased responsibilities, and Miss Thompson shows with sympathetic insight how the easing of the financial burden brings uppermost the Cockney faculty of forgetting the bad past in the warm optimism of a flash of good luck. Nor does she hesitatae to show the less attractive side of London society in high places and low. Mrs. Findlay, as unfaithful to her husband as he to her, sacrificing self-respect for the relief from the drudgery, drabness and dullness of her home, has nevertheless as real a share in the story as Lady Nicholson herself. The most difficult people to accept as true to type or to life are Clare Nicholson and her lover, Mark Petre. They are emotional young people who at 26 years of age have sampled life and found it full of disillusionment. Clare who for a long time prefers to. be Mark s mistress' rather than become his wife, seems at first a thoroughly selfish young woman so busy with her own emotions end preciousness as to have little time for anything else. . Yet when Lily Cashmore, seeking work at the Nicholson's house and refused because hunger and weakness make her faint during her interview with Lady Nicholson, needs first of all sustenance and later more lasting assistance: it is Clare who empties her purse, who fetches .Lily’s baby so t fhat Ms mother can rest mind as well, as body,and who says harsh things to her parents when they decide not to give Lily employment Miss Nicholson has this faculty of surprising the reader ’ with the developments of het characters. It seemed at first that the Clare-Mark entanglement would end as many unorthodox relationships between men and women have often concluded, namely, by both parties, becoming heartily tired of each other. The development is quite different, and while the reader may find himself rather wishing for air when introspection is rarrinH on at some length, the challenge of youth to authority, just because it is authority, the resolve to think out a plan of life that shall satisfy not authority but those who are making the plan compels interest whatever may be thought of the experiences undergone in the quest for a satisfactory scheme of living. Mark Petre, who unashamedly prefers to live on a small income instead of earning a larger one by working because he values leisure more than money is an interesting study. He takes himself exceedingly seriously, and some of his “high thinking” sounds perilously like what used to be termed simple jealousy where a girl is concerned, but he is by no means just the. ordinary selfish, sensuous young man in Society. Mark and Clare had one belief in common. They shrank from being infected by what' Clare called “the cancerous convention of what they should be, and to be so, what they should need, own, think and, above all, seem.” For that convention, Clare avowed, people would sacrifice nerves, the straining of nature, the toughening of precious sensibility. They cried out “that happiness was just round the corner and that getting it was simply a matter of getting round the comer fast enough, and when you were round it, finding another comer.” In fewer words an older philosophy asked “what shall it profit a man if he, gain the whole world and lose his soul” and one wonders whether, after all, that is not the kernel of much of the esoteric reasonings of the most advanced of thinkers, young or old. It would be unfair, however, to give the impression that this is a book full of wearying self-analysis. It is nothing of the sort. It is a brightly written account of modem life and of people the like of whom the author makes you believe can be found wherever some folk have time to think and to play, and others are hard put to it to obtain shelter and food. Life in the raw and life in cotton-wool. 'Miss Thompson gives you both, and the mixture is attractive and sometimes exhilarating.

Now is the time to buy gardening books! We have the following in stock —Tannock’s —Practical Gardening in New Zealand. New edition. Price 6/-, postage 6d. Yate s Gardening Guide (1934), 1/-, postage 3d.; Brett’s Gardening Guide, 6/6, postage 6d.; Vegetable Gardening in New Zealand. 2/-, postage 3d.; Flower Gardening in New Zealand, 2/-, postage 3d.; Rose Growing in New Zealand, 2/-, postage 3d.'; Rock Gardening in New Zealand, 3/6, postage 3d. A. J. Fyfe Ltd..' “The Book People,” Phone 1397, New Plymouth.*