COURSE OF TRUE LOVE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18536, 5 April 1930, Page 14 (Supplement)

COURSE OF TRUE LOVE

THE SERIOUSNESS OF YOUTH. It is something of a relief these days to open the pages of a new book that Is neither a war book nor yet a detective story; a relief that turns to surprise and pleasure to find, as in the Instance of Mr J. D. Beresford’s new novel. “Love’s Illusion, ’ a simple story of first love with a nineteenth century background. The story is presented to the reader through the memories of a man of 50. It is the story of his own golden youth. At 22, just down from Cambridge, ready to enjoy a vacation at his father’s vicarage before going into business, he falls completely, absorbingly, in love with Brenda Maxwell, the neighbouring squire’s elder daughter, a beautiful, if precocious, girl of 17, who shares with her mother a rather flighty reputation. Under its cloud the family is isolated from the social life of the county.

Our hero, however, realises nothing of this, and is too absorbed in Brenda to feel more than a passing doubt when it beccfnes apparent to him that Brenda’s mother is not like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. A climax in one of her affairs is reached which brings his own short-lived triumph to a close. Brenda dismisses him.

Mr Beresford shows the desperate seriousness of young love. If slight, his book is interesting, and fails only in its minor characters, who are overdrawn and unconvincing.