WHAT LONDON IS READING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21244, 14 January 1939, Page 8

WHAT LONDON IS READING

A WIDOWER’S FAIRYLAND AN IDYLL OF ANCIENT EGYPT (Specially written for "The Tiinaru Herald" by Charles Pilgrim) LONDON. November 18. It would be an interesting thing to make a shelf-full of the best-selling novels of the past and present generation. A careful examination of them might or might not give us a safe guide to what the public really want and render not a little satisfaction to unsuccessful novelists in distress. Prominent on this shelf would be “If Winter Comes,” by Mr A. S. M. Hutchinson. One would not that although Mr Hutchtason has had his other successes he has not been able to produce another best-seller in the gigantic class. His new novel “As Once You Were” (Nicholson and Watson) is of the same school as “If Winter Comes.” Piers Exceat is a hero of a type to which the great heart of the public instinctively goes out. A widower of fifty-five, he retires into the country full of good intentions and high spirits with the object of recapturing his youth. Thanks to his good will and exuberant spirit he is able to enter into the happiest relations with a small group of rather undesirable persons. He is determined to impart to them the happiness which he can discover in life, the happiness of a second boyhood. He takes a dirty chair-mender into his home; he acts as fairy godfather to an unsuccessful and discontented young novelist, and he falls in love with a charming girl of twenty-two. But he discovers that twenty-two is not for fifty-five. Therefore. being the kind of man he is. he enriches the young novelist so that there may be a happy union of youth. It is fairyland full of that charm which enabled Mr Hutchinson to become a best-seller. The question is: Can a novelist w’ho has been working for so many years recapture the high spirits and sunny attractiveness of a younger man? One feels that the problem of Piers Exceat is the problem of his author. How will the public deal with it? Will the story of the goldenhearted widower turn out another gold mine? An Egyptian Princess Writers are still digging into the distant past to find material for books which are so near to fiction that they cannot be called history, and so near 0 fact that it is difficult to class them with novels. Such a book is “The Lest Queen of Egypt” (Seeker and Warburg). The author, Miss Lucille Morrison, has given us a very charming story of the ancient court of Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti. These two have become almost popular figures, thanks to the frequent reproduction of their portraits. Clearly, Miss Morrison has a wide and intimate knowledge of life in the Egyptian court and its surroundings. She draws something like an idyllic picture of peace and beauty with a distant enemy hammering at Egypt’s confines. When Akhenaten dies he is succeeded by that Tutankhaten, known to us more familiarly as Tutankhamen. It is the Princess Ankhsenpaaten, the wifi* of the new young king, who is the heroine of the story. The young king dies and the young widow flees from her enemies with Kenofer, a romantic and loved her. This is a work full of idealistic young artist who has always delight for readers who are not frightend of an ancient, highly developed and beautiful civilisation. One feels that one is living in a golden age, but with an overshadowing consciousness that the sunshine and the flowers are fleeting, only to be wiped out by the flood of war. The pages are made more delightful by a large number of decorations by Franz Geritz. Soil or Machine Mr Alec Brown has written a story of peasant life in Yugo-Slavia in “Margareta” (Boriswood). Margareta is a true daughter of the soil. Her father and all her ancestors represented the peasant proprietors undiluted and undeveloped. When she marries Andreya, she finds that he 'S not of her generation nor truly of her stock. His mind goes tow-ards machinery and away from the simple farming of their tradition. After six years the husband, sick of the soil, goes to America and becomes wealthy, thanks to his experiments in harvesting machinery. With his new wealth he returns to the Slavonian village and his people. Margareta still loves him but she does not love his new ways and his machinery. She is rooted in the land and lands means more to her than even married life. In the divergence of ideals one finds something of a microcosm of the world’s life today. Mr Brown writes with sympathy with the peasant. He knows their traditions and habits, he can give us vivid pictures of their customs and rural cermonies. “Margareta” is a romance of unusual interest made all the more interesting by its unusual setting. The Gentle Jesus A week or' so ago one reviewed in this column Sir Hall Caln’e monumental “Life of Christ.” in which a romantic novelist built up a romantic Figure. Now we have a very different and much smaller work in “A Life of Jesus Christ Our Lord” (Sheed and Ward), by Vincent McNabb. Father McNabb, too, has built up a Divine Figure in accordance with his own personal interpretation and the essence may be summed up as loving humility. The Jesus of this book enters intimately and with human reaction into the lives of those He meets. Father McNabb is intent on showtag the psychological inevitability of all Gospel events. Things happened bthey should have happened and must have happened with such an influence working in their midst Father McNabb seems tj find it all very simple. He has as little use for the pains and difficulties of mere scholarship as for the problems of esoteric ratification.