FICTION
BEFORE THE BOMBARDMENT. By Osbert Sitwell. (Duckworth. 7s. 6d. net.)—Some thousands of people— perhaps more—are bound to dislike this clever novel. Mr. Sitwell did not, in any case, write it to please them, the men and women of ready-made ideas.
The first merit of this book, after its sanity, is the excellence of its style. The author has a real command of language and uses it crisply. The story, entirely of the non-sentimental, non-erratic kind, describes the relationship of two old ladies. All the dingy grandeur, all the petty social fever, the spites and ambitions of a seaside town come pouring into the tale, and the characters are so deftly drawn as to strike the reader with all the completeness and animation of real life. Before the Bombardment is like Cranford in this, but with an added asperity, like Thackeray though even yet more ironical. It is the irony that will vex many. So hugely has the liberty of the Press been curtailed of late on all save sexual subjects that the public is as unaccustomed to adverse comment on institutions, customs, popular prejudices or current cant as it is of criticism adverse to the instigators of our hourly increasing tabus. Mr. Sitwell passes terse and unfavourable judgment on sport and Public Schools, on local subscription dances, county manners, architects, snobbery. In his last chapter he does something even more unusual. He criticizes a well- remembered Wartime recruiting " slogan."
It is in the chapter called Treats that the most graceful and alluring passages occur. There is 'a description of a market hall which is exquisite. But the same clarity of vision that makes the author see the meanness and hypocrisies of his world also reveals to him rare, spiritual and concrete loveli- ness : and the whole story of the bewildered elderly com- panion and her mysterious patroness, and of the tragedy that comes to the former, is suffused with insight, compassion and beauty.
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