New Novels
THE four novels under review have so many threads in common that they might form a tapestry. A prominent character in the first Is a doctor with a weak heart, and its heroine suffers defeat in love. In the second, an elderly woman with heart disease dies in a frenzy because her young lover has deserted her. Towards the end of The Doctors, in which many organs besides the heart are afflicted, an elderly woman is brought to hospital after attempting suicide when her young lover leaves her. Love and medicine are likewise entwined in Doctor Dear, and an old woman's death helps to confirm the heroine's final decision. The four fall naturally into pairs. Miss Jenkins and Mlle. Joyetis both deal with a triangle. Imogen, heroine of The Tortoise and 10 Hare, is married Ito a successful barrister fourteen years her senior. If she does not understand him, still less does he understand her' Their small boy, Gavin, takes after his father, and understands enough of his mother to make him despise her. She never ded anything," he tells his friend Tim. "She just suffers." Imogen one of those radiant women who offer no resistance once their ho" on love is threatened. As soon as she realises that she is losin0 Evelyn to Blanche Silcox, plain, tweed-clad, hoarse, and fifty, she shows, in an agony pitiful to see, that Gavin's comment was true. Her few protests are so inept, so ill-timed, that the barrister cal reasonably, as she says, `destroy' her. No less blind to the reactions of the village, despite his legal training, he had "a majestic unconcern for opinion when he had decided to ignore it." The determinatioa of the elderly, unlovely Blanche to capture the only man she hal loved, and the skill, largely unconscious, with which she tak,et . advantage of Imogen's vagueness, .make the main action of tne story. A number of beautifully observed minor characters watch Imogen's defeat but cannot avert it. She has their affection, hut only one can reach her, the small boy Tim; and he, transformed hY an attention which she gave at first carelessly out of an instinctive kindness, sounds her one note of hope at the end. This story, exquisitely told, fulfils one of the novel's highest NO' tions by leaving us with a deeper understanding of life. Ever' husband with a streak of honesty will search his heart as he ponders Evelyn's usage of Imogen. But Miss .Jenkins plays fair. It is a part of her triumph that she nowhere glosses over Imogen's short' comings. The plight of one who is defeated before the fight begilla can seldom have been so truly shown. No one need shrink froni this book; its pain is lightened by a dozen portraits, all so delicatelY drawn that we can see and hear the characters, and in some cases' Cecil's, for instance—feel the very touch of their hand. The Tortoisi and the Hare is a lovely and memorable novel, skilful, mature, and penetrating, Open Arms might be quoted to show the difference between the French and English attitudes to possessive love. An elderly woll uses her immense wealth to seduce a handsome young man, all finds that he is using her money to entertain and hold a girl of twentY. In love for the first time, after a life of cold indulgence, Julia humiliateS herself vainly, then writes to the girl a full confession, hoping. t° disgust her with Laurent. Laurent, despairing, writes his confession too. The girl replies. , Narrowed to these three and concentrated on their passions, the story has an obsessive brilliance. The glare of the harsh southern_ sun, the dry hot winds contrast with airless bedrooms heavy wit.' scent and strewn with costly underwear. Mlle. Joyeux, famous 111 another medium, shows astonishing talent as a writer. But for careless couple of pages at the end, for which the scheme of her booh allows no place, this is a most accomplished performance, veltic„i more than once put me in mind of Adolphe. Mlle. Joyeux gives " passion, joy, and anguish: but Miss Jenkins, with her wider range,' her cool tones, her light and shade and the greater depth of he' characterisation, gives us very much more. The Doctors, a translation of volumes one and two of Les Homni en Blanc, describes the experiences of Jean Nerac, a young medical, student, from the day of his arrival at a Paris hospital. It givei details of his work—too full, perhaps, for delicate ,stomachs—and his first ventures in love: but for M. Soubiran the spirit is alwaY' more important than the letter, and the born healers, like Marianne,! are distinguished sharply from the mere manual practitioners sum. as the surgeon who clings to an outworn technique when a new °II saves pain and even lives. This is a noble book, superbly translate" (rude puns and all) by Mr. Oliver Coburn. Doctor Dear, as its title suggests, is a smaller and cosier affair; Its heroine, a woman G.P. in partnership with a man, loses her but does not let her work suffer. Likeable, attractive, and good at job, she is shown on her rounds and in contact with her colleagnei up to the time when she makes a decision in which heart and hen:: have equal voice. The construction is amateurish, and the Pa.% graphing so restless that it made me feel I had hiccoughs, but To book's sanity and soundness prevail. Anyone with a doctor in family will relish a score of touches—for example, the cunning, angelic behaviour of a patient as soon as there is an attemPt certify her. Doctor Dear should be widely enjoyed.
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