BOOKS REVIEWED.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15152, 27 January 1923, Page 11 (Supplement)

BOOKS REVIEWED.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Churoh of England Publication.

An interesting and necessarily uncommon Church of England publicatio is imminent. The National Assembly of the Church of England has obtained the sanction of Parliament to issue a revised table of Hie lessons used in church, which, after December 3, may lawfully replace the old lessons presented by the Book of Common Prayer. This means, of course, a new exploration of the Bible in church services. This, however, is not a new departure. About fifty years ago Parliament made variations and gave certain liberties. Before that date each lesson consisted of a full chapter, even if the chapter was long. A good many lessons from the Apocrypha were left out. So that for fifty years the Church of England has used the same selection every Sabbath. Now that the bill is passed, the result will be that church people will have the right to use one of three selections from the Old Testament and one of two from the New. It would be interesting to know how often tiie lessons have been altered since the first complete Prayer Book was published, under Edward VI., in 1548, but the history of the Book of Common Prayer, from first to last, is one of complexity.

“The Glimpses of the Moon,” by Edith Wharton. Here is a book which is bound to be widely read, and on the merits of. which opinion will be widely divided. Mrs Wharton, as a delineator of character and a literary artist, has a welldeserved reputation on both sides of the Atlantic and tiie Pacific. In “Glimpses of the Moon," the heroine, Susy Branch, is an almost penniless girl, born into that most useless and futile section of society, the Europeanised crowd of American millionaires, the company of furious and balse pleasure huhters who haunt the holiday resorts of France and Italy. Her only capital is her physical beauty and her quick wit, and she occupies a posiiton analogous to that held by Beatrice Normandy in Mr 11. G. Wells’s “Tono-Bungay," that of a floating, rootless parasite, conciliating the goodwill of her worthless patrons by constant lapses from any decent standard of morals. She is still free of any indelible stain when she marries Nick Lansing, an impecunious literary man full of artistic ambition, hut of an order of talent which dooms him to unpopularity. ' They flit from villa to villa lent by accommodating friends, when Lansing discovers that his wife is party to a doubtful intrigue. Up to this time lie has been easy-going, but he suddenly develops a high moral lone; they part, divorce proceedings are begun, and Susy is the prospective wife of a wealthy English nobleman, while Lansing has the certain prospect of a brilliant second marriage, when, quite naturally, they are brought together again, and Susy resumes her married life, chastened and strengthened. Readers will see the possibilities in material of this kind, and decide for themselves as to the method in which they have been handled. A really well-told story.

Dunsany Reviews Unwritten Play! Lord Dunsany has stolen a march on British reviewers. He knows what to expect from them in the way of a review, so he writes a typical review of ‘lt,” a play which he has not yet written: —“Lord Dunsany, in his playlet, that he whimsically names “It,” has evidently attempted by means of somewhat clumsy allegory to portray the political situation arising out of the latest by-election. The device is old and somewhat transparent. We detect, but are not deceived by, an effort on Lord Dunsany’s part to appear political, but this is merely heterogousness—arising mainly from his obvious lack of technique. HaU Lord Dunsany known anything of technique, he would have laid the first scene in Scotland instead of at Lewisham, while the remainder of the play might have taken place in London during the period of 1745; lie might thus have written a charming Jacobite comedy. As it is the play is scabulous, and, in parts, dyptic; we doubt if it will tickle the groundlings.”

“The Adventures of Sally,” by P. G. Wodehouse. Those who know me brilliantly humorous work of Mr Wodehouse will only require the announcement of another of his hooks to rush it. He has departed somewhat from his usual style in “The Adventures of Sally,” but gains strength thereby. Tiie book starts in the usual droll style, but halfway through is introduced a note of seriousness, although the comic element still persists. Sally Nicholas will take high rank among the garden of girls Mr Wodehouse has laid out for us. She is certainly very delightful. So, too, is her brother Fillmore, the 100-imaginative and uftra-Napole-onic young man, whose modest ambition is to monopolise each of tiie several discrepant businesses in which he embarks, who soars to fortune, and sinks to temporary ruin, to finish as the prosperous patentee of a new style of pork pie. Best of all characters, perhaps, is Lancelot—alias Ginger—Kemp, a muddlchcaded, cheery incompetent of the most hopeless and most lovable sort. But what happened him would be telling. Get hold of Ibis hook and thoroughly enjoy yourself. A Commercial Traveller's Talcs.

Commercial travellers nave the name of good story tellers, and they must certainly be in the way of collecting a few gems. Not all travellers’ talcs of Ihe kind to be heard in the steamer’s smoke room look well in print, hut the compiler of “Samples," who modestlv conceals his identity under tin letters “K.D.,” has got together a few that will give pleasure to those who read them. They have in most cases a local application, and some of them have been told on board and relate to steamers well-known in the New Zealand coastal trade. The collection is I lie. fruit, of 15 years of commercial travel in New Zealand, and although care lias been taken in some of them lo hide the names of persons and places, there will he no difficulty in identification. Tiie hook "samples” has been compiled for the joy id others as well as to keep the tales together. There are a few good '.Maori jukes in the hook, which is published j( v It. \V. Stiles and Co., Nelson.