OUR MR. WRENN.t
IT is seldom that a modern novelist gains a place of popular distinction so early in his career as to enable us, his readers, to look upon his early works with equanimity. Unless we are strongly inclined to archaeology, these beginnings put us off either by their ineptitude or by a certain flavour of unfashionableness. They are rather like the motors of 1905 and the clothes that went with them. But Mr. Lewis's first book, here to be considered, is so recent and so competent as to have neither of these disagreeable qualities. It does not depend at all upon our desire to see how Main Street and Babbitt came about. It can stand entirely upon its own feet. Mr. Wrenn, the mildest of little American clerks, becomes Bill Wrenn in the course of working his way to England in a cattle boat. Foreign travel was his aim and his desire. But various startling adventures in and out of a Bloomsbury boarding-house and in and out of his own social sphere conspired to make most of his foreign travel mental. Mr. Lewis has here given himself the opportunity of developing a favourite theme, the comparison of English and American manners and customs. But that is only a background. Mr. Lewis's keen insight into the ways of human nature and modern society find a wide scope here, and he proves himself an able story-teller. It is just the sort of book one would expect Mr. Lewis to have written as a first novel. It is sheer romance with realistic details. The transition by easy stages to Babbitt is a natural development of his mind. In Our Mr. Wrenn we see him sickening for Babbitt. Now he is firmly convinced that realism is more amusing than romance. In
this conclusion the present writer is inclined to agree. Mr. Lewis himself gives an able demonstration of the difference. In a romance, he says, a man swears he will not take a drink all day and does not. In real life, however, the man swears he will not take a drink all day and immediately goes to his club for a whisky and soda. Which, Mr. Lewis maintains, is much more diverting.
The Mad Rani, and other Indian Stories. By Philip Ashby. (Kagan Paul: 7s. 6d. net.) Mr. Ashby, in these sketches of Indian life and mentality, has struck a new note. In none of the stories does he attempt a climax, nor does he on any occasion avail himself of the legitimate means for achieving the atmospheric effect we are accustomed to appreciate in all writings about the East. His method is really extraordinarily successful ; and this lack of garniture has the unexpected double effect of emphasizing the strangeness of the Indian mind at work and, at the same time, of putting us in sympathy with the justice of motives and actions that, described by any other writer (except Mr. Edmund Candler, perhaps), would seem to us wholly repulsive and incomprehensible. Satti," " The Honour of Caste," " A Victim of Politics," are examples of this effect • while " The Gate of Bathing " and " The Postmaster's Daughter " show a very penetrating insight into the family emotions of the Indian.
Corinthian Days. By Andrew Soutar. (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d. net.) Mr. Soutar has worked cleverly with the old materials of romance. He writes with a certain gusto and rapidity which are admirably suited to his story, and his story is an excellent " thriller." Of course, it is mainly of prizefighters and their heroic or villainous patrons, the Corinthians, in the credibly good old days_of the early nineteenth century. There is the usual " dirty work " of the sporting novel, and to it the author has added an authentic highwayman—brave, elegant and profoundly honourable. Altogether good reading.
Being Respectable. By Grace H. Flandrau. (Jonathan Cape. 7s. 6d. net.)
This is an' interesting novel which the authbr describes in her dedication as an attempt to write about " a certain limited aspect of life in the middle North-West " of America. The book gives an exceedingly good account of its subject taken from an objective point of view. It will strike the English reader oddly because of its close resemblance to an eighteenthcentury novel, drunkenness being described as a commonplace episode in.the ordinary social life of the Middle-West. The young people, both male and female, get drunk, and even the virtuous and rather idealistic middle-aged man also indulges in bouts of intoxication to make him forget the dullness of everyday life. This is a curious confirmation of the statement made recently by " Americans " in these columns, and appears to the British reader as a sinister outcome of Prohibition. Miss Flandrau, however, does more than instruct her readers in the aspects of the life which she describes. She also produces an exceedingly readable story, and her characterization is extremely well done. The reader's attention will be held right up to the rather inconclusive end of the book. He will, on laying it down, feel that he has had an intimate glimpse of a social life which, though like in fundamental essentials to the social life of England, so differs in Its details that it produces the illusion of being different in kind as well as in degree.
Nordenhoit's • Million. By J. J. Connington. (Constable. 78. 6d. net.) An exciting pseudo-scientific story of the releasing of certain " denitrifying bacteria " which consume most of the available nitrogen in the air and cause the collapse of civilization. The drastic methods by which Nordenholt, a metaphysical millionaire, organizes a body of five million workers to combat the evil make exciting and terrifying reading.
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