FICTION
By FORREST REID
MR. GILLIGAN'S Boundary Against Night is by no means a perfect novel, but it is an unusual one. Its faults are a loose- ness of construction (by the elimination of superfluous passages it might have been tightened up all round greatly to its advan- age), and at times a lack of restraint in the writing—an over- writing, in fact, that strikes a somewhat hysterical note. This mars certain scenes—that of the return of the two wounded soldiers to the village of Piety Corner, for instance, and that of Gabriel's suicide. It is clear that what the author is after is strength, but it is equally clear that what he frequently achieves is violence.- His style at its best is lyrical and coloured, and it is only at its best in the purely descriptive passages. In dialogue and in the treatment of - dramatic incident he is inclined to force the note, and the effect becomes strained.
Nevertheless, there are moments when he attains beauty, when realism is shot through with a fantastic poetry. The descrip- tion, at the beginning of the tale, of the naked body washing through the sea, is such a moment, and it is repeated again at the very end. Of course, strictly speaking, this is not realism at all, but imaginative writing, almost on the grandiose scale of such novels as Victor Hugo's. Mr. Gilligan probably will be surprised by the comparison, for he. is . very modern, and modern American at that. His subject is the Boston police strike which occurred just after the War and transformed that quiet city into a temporary inferno.. Who could have guessed that the Boston of Henry James would ever become, even after the lapse of half a century, the Boston here described. The corruption of the police, the emergence of the criminal under- world, the looting, the debauchery, the savagery, all 'seem half incredible. I have witnessed a period of riot in my own city, I have seen a youth shot down practically on my doorstep, but the looting—characteristically—was confined to public-houses and tobacconists, women were not molested, the police did their duty, and, in comparison, it- was all innocent as a Sunday School treat.
• Mr: ,Gilligan has two heroes : one a sailor who was blinded in the- War ; the other a policeman, who is a ruffian with -per- haps a redeeming feature or so. And the list portion of the novel is best described by its own title, " American. Dance of Death." - Possibly this is not a book for the squeamish ; the phonographic fidelity to the' appalling vocabulary of the-police- man is, .1 think, aesthetically a mistake, if for no other reason
than that it-becomes 4 bore. On the other hand, there is nothing unwholesome, nothing offensive, nothing gratuitously ugly in the treatment. True, it is a tragedy without any of the dignity of tragedy. The Greeks, Shakespeare, Racine, Matthew Arnold—one and all would have dismissed the subject as unworthy. And to this extent I am on their side, in that I too belieye- an imaginative work, if it is 'to be first-rate, must possess three qualities—beauty of subject, beauty of treat- ment, beauty of writing. But there is no use in applying ideal standards where obviously they are meaningless, and experience may bring Mr. Gilligan more austerity of manner, a finer taste. • In Miss Lingstrom's A Flower in His Hand I fancy I spot a best-seller. It has all the qualities that bring popularity. It is true, but not uncompromisingly true, for when the clouds become darkest Miss Lingstrom pulls them about a little to reveal silver linings; it is unconventional, but never discon- certingly so. Moreover, the author has hit oh an idea which only in the hands of a bungler could fail to produce an inter- esting story, and Miss Lingstrom is not a bungler, she writes uncommonly well, with flashes of humour, much sympathy,
and a keen eye for character. The book opens with the return to England of Axel Wreford, who has reached the late forties and is wealthy and unattached, his wife having deserted him twenty years earlier. Wreford is lonely, affectionate, perhaps slightly sentimental. He is half Norwegian, but regards England as his home, though in England he has no friends, since he has lived most of his life abroad. He is very fond of children and actually adopts three—a bOy of fourteen, a
boy of ;twelve,' and a girl of ten—taking them to a country house, where he 'intends.to bring them up as 'his own family. The children have never seen one another before; they are remarkably different, both in temperament and ability; the younger boy and the girl have been rescued from deplorable surroundings; the older boy is of Norwegian farming stock; therefore the plan of transforming them into one united upper-middle-class family, who will regard Wreford as Daddy, seems on the face of it optimistic.
It would have been both amusing and interesting to watch this gradual metamorphosis, but Miss Lingstrom takes the easier way of skipping a period of six years, and when the curtain rises again the change is accomplished. Knud is at Oxford, Valentine at an expensive boarding-school, and Auriol quite determined to go to Vienna to study music. The plan up to a point has succeeded, but so far as Wreford , is concerned only up to a point, for the young people are bent on striking out paths of their own, and these paths all seem to lead away from him. So Wreford is left, and Miss Lingstrom, suddenly relenting, is obliged to intervene, play- ing the part of Providence and bestowing upon him the conso- lation he undoubtedly deserves, but which a more disinterested Providence I am afraid would have withheld.
Mr. Borodin's Street of a Thousand Misters appears to be a first novel, and the best thing about it is the freshness of its material. At least, it was fresh to me; I had never before read so graphic and detailed a history of a 'young surgeon's career.' The young surgeon in question is Peter Satov, a Russian, and the street is Harley Street. But it is only in the hit quarter of the novel that we reach it. Peter has taken his degree in Rome, and the opening scenes of the book are laid in Germany, where, after experiencing innumirable'diffi- culties (foreign competition evidently is not welcomed), he is taken up by the great Professor Zlinka, who recognises his exceptional talent. For a time he works under Zlinka, who himself is not in particularly good odour with the Government; then, refusing to take out papers of naturalisation, he comes to England, working first as a house-surgeon in the north, and at last taking a room in Harley Street. Here further diffi- culties arise. Peter's ability is not disputed, it is on questions of etiquette that he comes to grief. He attends a consultation in grey flannel trousers, he takes a manicurist out to tea, he is seen by the chauffeur of one of his patients drinking a cup of coffee after midnight in Pryam's Coffee House. These things apparently are sufficient to make all Harley 'Street turn its back upon him.
The virtue of the novel is that it shows us Peter at work. We are present at many operations, and they are fully described. All the rest of the book is ordinary enough. The only really convincing character is Peter himself ; the others are presented pictorially from the outside—even Anne, who persuades Peter to behave more reasonably, and brings the whole story to a happy conclusion, being little more than a property figure, a symbol of feminine charm. What interests the author is Peter's work and career, and this is what interests the reader too. In fact, the book left me doubtful whether, with another subject, Mr. Boroclin would have had much success.
Unknown River has nothing in common with the foregoing novels ; it is purely a yarn. From its romantic opening on a summer night on the Thames Embankment, when young Peter Sherwood, who has no matches, asks a stranger for a light, to its romantic close among trappers and Indians in the far north, it seemed to me to possess all the qualities of a capital boys' book, there being no women in it, while 'the adventures are vigorous and stirring, including a man-bunt, a hunt for gold, and the discovery of the mysterious Unknown River. I do not mean by this that it will not appeal to older readers also. Peter's favourite authors are Stevenson and Rider Haggard, and his own story is wholly one of action. Mr. Scott is not so inventive and exciting as Rider Haggard at his best, and certainly he has neither Stevenson's sense for style nor his humour, but he can tell an open-air tale in a simple straightforward fashion, and he has lived in the land. he describes.
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