NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17412, 26 May 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

"The Unburled Dead," by Stephen McKenna.

Shephen McKenna's latest novel, for plot and character drawing, is one nf bis best. It. deals with that unhappy portion of the British aristocracy known to-day as "the new poor," and dependent, on the charity of their new friends, the wealthy commoners. His study of Doris. Ihe society woman, who relics on presents from climbers to pay tier creditors, is .excellent. Although she is a predatory woman, one never quite loses sympathy with her. The story is told in the first person by a voting American, who loves herj even though he sees through her.t Tbe end is somewhat unconvincing.* hut Ihe* story holds the reader's in-; forest throughout.

"The Human Habitat," by Ellsworth Huntington.

Hn the great canvas nf the earth is sketched the pageant of human life. Only certain parts of the canvas contain the human story. Man is absolutely the creature of his environment. His civilisations depend upon the fertility of the soil he inhabits. The great civilisations of the East were built upon rice, those of the West, built upon wheat and barley. Had these grains failed Buddhism would have starved and Rome would have been but a name. In the glacial age, men, on the shores of the Meditterranean. lived in small scattered communities, like the Eskimos of today. The ice receded, and grasses grew and seeded, were husbanded and improved, and civilisation grew around the planted acres. Where the subsistence is poor, the, race is poor also, witness the pigmies of New Guinea. Here is a book which fells us of man and explains the modifications caused by climate, an interesting story, well illustrated by photographs.

"Bread and Honey." By Madeline Linford.

Miss Linford has at least three useful gifts of the novelist—-sympathy, good humour, and the capacity to make things seem probable. Her account of Angela Worth as a novelist, though perceptive, and amusing, would not in itse]f inspire much confidence, because what the. novelist says about the novelist is not evidence of creative ability: it is upon the re-emergence, in Part 111., nf Angela the woman— Angela unaware—from Angela Ihe novelist thai the estimate of Miss Linford is based. It was, indeed, a brilliant inspiration to make Angela a mueh better castaway upon a Pacific island than a romancer about its possibilities. Many writers would have proceeded upon ihe linos of "The Wrong Paradise" and made Angola go lo pieces when faced with the realities of Ihe dream she hail externalised in "Island Love." Instead of which Angela rises to the occasion with a matler-of-factness peculiar to her sex, and nothing could be better than the gradual' unfolding of her "sterlingqualities" under the necessity which reduces her male companion to abject nelplessncss. Wc are inclined to believe that the less discriminating champions of the female Intellect will dislike. Miss Linford heartily for her unexpected transformation of Angola, and we doubt if oven Miss Linford is aware of all she has done by way of implication. Rest of r.ll. she has resisted the temptation of Ihe obvious truth that Angela was born lo take care of the likes of Mr Courtney. It is a nice question whether the novel ought or ought nol to have a sequel. There is no suggestion that Angela and Mr Courtney aro ever to meet again, but "mutual tolerance" seems, somehow, exactly to describe his demands of life, and he was quite capable of keeping Angela from writing another novel.

The pehemp of thp book is simple enough. Miss* Angela Worth, thirtysrx and spinstering comfortably in a Cheshire village, is inspired by a Christmas present of five boxes of writing paper and a chance remark of the vicar's to write a novel. The only adequate description of it is her prospective publisher's "My* Gawd!" However. "Isbmd Love" runs into 200,000 copies in England and America, and is filmed, and Angela enjoys every moment of her success. Her publisher suggests a voyage to the South Seas to collect local colour for a second novel, and quite, plausible circumstances arrange that Angela repeats the experience of the heroine of her first, with the exception- that what in "Island Love" is screened by a row of asterisks in the actual experience is demurely deleted by a row of dots. In general it may be said that when Miss Linford is writing from special knowledge of "literary circles" she writes, though smartly, not very well; but when she writes from sympathetic imatrination she writes very well indeed. Incidentally her publishers are (o be thanked for two gjormus misprints, f'm Coiirtnev v,as already the victim of gea .sickness" —almost incredibly apt in the context and in the advertisement of another author's novel on the inside of the jacket we are told that the hero wen! about "ba.juring Ihe love of women." He sounds almost hko Mr Courtney.

W. E. Gladstone. By Osbert Burdett.. A remarkable rehabilitation of Gladstone's political character has been one result of the publication of QueenA'ictoria's later letters and the exhibition of Disraeli's outrageous conduct during the last seven years of his life. No Mauroisian flippancy can make the aged Disraeli anything but a consummate cynic; but, on the other hand, no new biographer can find any unsuspected depths or even turns in Gladstone. Mr Burdett has done a competent job, although it would be difficult to argue that, falling into an all-too-common trick of the hour, he has repeated and emphasised far more than he should have done the supposed point of a casual remark of the young Gladstone to the fleet that he was wilhout the inner light. Mr Burdett has been regarded as a member of. the Squirearchy—that is, the group of younger writers revolving about the London Mercury. They arc understood to have set for themselves a. standard of correct, and lucid writing. This being so, it is an odd circumstance that Mr Burdett's monograph should contain a large number of sentences, not at all abstruse, which arc virtually unintelligible at first reading.