BOOK NOTICES

New Zealand Tablet, 24 April 1924, Page 19

BOOK NOTICES

Conversations of Ebury Street. By George Moore. Heinemann, London. ~ ._. George Moore is a lean and slippered pantoloon in these days. He can write English but he is unable to think. That much is evident in all his works and not less in this new book of his. His conversations are * about all sorts of things and people. He patronises George Eliot,, regards Hardy as the author of absurd novels, considers Conrad puny, and exterminates, all the' great Victorians because they believed in duty and had . some. sense .of, morality. George himself has no sense at all. That’s what ails him, poor man. . . ' Marmadukc. By Alan Monkhouse. Jonathan Cape. Price, 6/-, ■., '■ ■ ... - v • • • If you have read My Daughter Helen you will already know how Alan Monkhouse can write. He is an artist in his characterisation. His dialogues are -things of great grace. Do not open the book if you love the striking and the obvious and the brutal and the strong. Marmaduke is the sequel to My Daughter Helen and it has the same delicate modulations of sympathy and the same subtle irony as its predecessor. Daunt, the waster, ‘ and Helen, the waster’s -wife ! are t wonderfully. drawn. The novel is a book full of kindness and rich in human insight. Headers who want excitement will discard it as dull ; those who can appreciate a masterly story will enjoy it. : : '.;’' ' ; " : Papini’s Prayer to Christ. America* Press. Ten Cents. „ - >J ; itlni-the English translation much that was good was omitted from Papini’s Life of Christ. Among other things thus eliminated by a stupid or a malignant translator was the great Prayer which is . now presented Via, the ; public by the "America Press " Ityrars been ' translated by Veronica Dwight, whose work has the author’s approval/;