BROOK EVANS. By Susan Glaspell: (Victor Gollancz. 7s. 6d.)—The fiction
of this distinguished dramatic author is not so tense and subtle as her plays - and the psychology of her latest novel is more unequal than its careful style. Naomi Copeland grows like a red lily among the ploughed fields and pasture lands of Illinois ; and trysts with her lover in deep felicity by the brook that runs through velvet most under the sighing trees. Before he can marry her he is killed by, his own harvesting machine ; and she is forced into marriage with the godly, unattractive Caleb Evans, who is willing to father the child into whom the spirit of the brook has passed. In the bleak homestead beyond the mountains at Santa Clara, Naomi, grey and broken, fights obstinately on the side of love and delight for her daughter, who is neither comprehending nor grateful. She seems to lose and die tragic- ally when Brook scorns her tis a mother who has " gone wrong " and cruelly tears her tender plots by departure with the missionaries. But in Book IV. we are reintroduced to Brook, an elegant widow living With her son at Senlis, as she flies to the Rue de la Paix to buy a costly golden gown because it is like that her mother made-her for her first dance. In the golden gown she meets Erik Helge,- " a man of magic from Iceland," who offers the " madness and miracles " her mother had desired for her ; and she abandons all other duties to follow him to China, understanding Naomi at last, Her boy, visiting his uncongenial relatives in Illinois, id enraged at first ; but, sitting by the brook where his grand" Mother found love holy, is soothed into acquiescence. The character of Brook remains uncertain because the author, desists from the transition between the girl and the woman it but the novel is an eloquent study in pain, passion, and pity,' The first part especially is beautifully written.
Previous page
