Fiction

From Grim to Gay

7s. 6d.)

Jack A'Manory. By G. B. Stem. (Chapman and Hall. 7s. 6d.)

Tax characters in these five novels belong to strangely different terraces in the world of fiction. How infinitely per- plexed would be Dreiscr's imperturbable Cowperwood, with his appetite for solid splendours, in one of the swift come-

diettas that flash through G. B. Stern's Viennese cafe! How incredible would seem her golden Veronica in an over- upholstered home in commercial Philadelphia !

The Financier is read earnestly by those who are already broken to their Dreiser's method of mercilessly accumulated detail ; but it is not the work wherewith to make a convert. It contains more minute technical description than usual, and less of that smouldering fire that waits its flagrant moment of pity and terror. Long as the novel may be, The Financier is only the epilogue to the Titan, and the third part of the trilogy of desire " is still to come. Desire for power, for splendid sensuality, for money that conquers these ! In this book the author handles business operations with the solemn

zest of the peasant soul at the centre of his genius ; but here is none of the imaginative glory with which Balzac can make and unmake fortunes. Cowperwood, already a figure of in- vincible will, is not yet the condottiere of finance and the high voluptuary he will become in the sequel. Aileen Butler is a crude young adorer, though the mood of the odalisque is penetratingly divined in her. Moreover, in this book Dreiser does not convey the sense of place, for once. Here is neither the fierce throb of Chicago nor the glitter of New York you do not feel his Philadelphia. The trial of Cowperwood is intolerably long. But the clumsy yet moving Dreiserian ten-

derness is not absent from the stunned and desperate shape of the old man Butler, heartbroken because of his lost anti

defiant daughter. All the business men and their women-folk are grimly visible and alive ; all the places they inhabit, peni-

tentiaries, houses of accommodation, pretentious villas, are as grimly actual and portentous. Nothing could he farther removed frond Mr's-6'es inaferialist World than the dreamlike rencounters and oddly intersecting planes and vanishing edges of ChriStopher Morley's delicate fiction. With its little postern doors into faerie, its wild and wistful mirth, it belongs.to the European tradition ; and the author plays on the English language as on a harpsichord, in the story that gives its name to his book. How sweetly he feels the serene golden enchantment of London squares, hoW searchingly describes the rankling of the shaft sped by the wild gay image with which has vanished all the magic of Picca- dilly Circus ! In " Pleased to Meet You," again, the beauties of the American tongue turn to grotesque rapture on the lips of the innocent misled inhabitants of Illyria, a small Republic embarrassed by the League of Nations. This is a radiant farce that almost dances into comic opera. There is a lightful girl in it, and the fun becomes so delectable that the quite unexpected conclusion is of a cleverness that seems unfair—unfair as a stab when you are laughing. The Amu;

a distinguished and entrancing volume.

Perhaps the young people of Miss Helen Simpson's Cups, Wands, and Swords are not so unlike Mr. Morley's sensitives: The opening scene in Chelsea, with the lit heads bending over the fatal tarot cards, odd things beloved by Renaissance princes and cardinals for their significant symbols of Egypt and Babylon, rouses an ominous expectation that is perhaps not entirely fulfilled. Indeed, the atmosphere of this queer attractive story seems to require a more elaborate kind of plot. The theme of the intense psychic relation between the twins is gently touched ; and the childish incident that marred it is adroitly inserted. ;Celia glow softly, for all her sini2 plicity ; and her perverse alluring brother is only too evasive: There is something capricious about the narrative ; and the happy ending is out of time.- Yet -it is a fascinating novel; with mirror-flashes of the uncanny.

John Fanning's Legacy is also heavy with psychic distress, though the secret, we find, is material enough. Miss Naomi Hoyde-Smith is a disconcerting novelist who usually seems about to grasp with artistic. surety some unusual effect, a little morbid ihough very interesting ; then prefers to evade it. She merely makes a ripple on the surface instead of plunging for her black pearl. In her new book you are kept awhile in a state of tension, expecting news of some mysterious disaster, and are suddenly confronted with a murder. It is a real Shock, skilfully arranged ; but all the people involved in the

tragedy are indistinct and opaque. and the heavy. a mechanism of the story—two statements nd a correspondence —gets in the reader's way. It remains an ingenious novel, though curiously baffling.

. With Jack A'Manory we swing into a dancing world. Miss Stern is one of the few women-novelists who have a certain masculine tolerance and whimsical indulgence of temper. She has shown that she can group her characters in large compositions and bring together three generations in one novel. Now she is for the time amusing—very amusing. In the charming curved glasses of these short stories she pours an amber wine, sparkling, but with an aroma. She twirls her episodes in The Little Hot Dog' with a debonair Viennese grace, conducts her elegant amorists through deft and cynical harlequinades, pausing always on the right sentences; sad leaves us thoroughly. exhilarated.

RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.