Strange Marriage

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 43, 20 February 1931, Page 6

Strange Marriage

Nett a Syrett. WRITER has given us quite a nunw ber of good novels, mostly with a Viotorian background. This new story is also Victorian and it presents us with an interesting problem. Can a woman love two men? Here we have Niel Ferris, thirty-six, rather handsome, well educated, sorfiewhat of a literary high-brow, but entirely ignorant of women. Niel meets Jenny Shandon. eighteen years, proposes to her and is accepted. Jenny, a raw country lass, was also ignorant of the ways of the world, and in the opinion of his friends was unfit to be the mate of a man of Niel’s intellect. Jenny has to attend all kinds of functions and at some she reviewed the crowd present: They represented, she supposed, the friends and acquaintances with whom Niel had always been surrounded. But to her they were alien, incomprehensible, alarm - ing, and at the same time provocative of mirth which she felt to be unseemly. For, -of course, they were, they must be, awfully clever, and how she, a perfect ignoramus, could feel like laughing when they talked, she could not imagine. Naturally, this intolerable position could not last long, and so it is not surprising to find that Niel and Jenny have drifted apart in rather a peculiar manner. However, another young man has entered Jenny’s life, he is Ronald Corsbie, a friend of her childhood. Jenny tells him: My marriage has never been a marriage —and you are my first lover, Ronnie. Ultimately, Jenny repents and has a confession to make to Niel, Ronnie passes out of her life, she returns to Niel who has also changed. Miss Syrett compels our interest and sympathy with her characters, and in the end Jenny is left a wiser, but by no means a sadder woman. This is a dramatic story of how love and human beings change.