Another Part of the Forest. By G. B. Stem. (Cassell.
12s. 6d.)
WHIMSICAL, wordy, sentimental in a large blowsy way, another big chunk of autobiography follows Miss Stern's Monogram. If one can talk about form at all in relation to these books, this one is shaped around all the presents Miss Stern has received– presents of walking-sticks and little horses, of paper-weights
and wine, presents from Humbert Wolfe and Mr. Maughan and Mr. Coward and the Marx Bros. and Mr. Wells: it is all rather like a prolonged hint to the reader to send her a present too. Her friends all seem to be very rich and this gives an indigestible flavour to the presents—even the jokes are elephantine and expensive. " Standing on my Adam mantelpiece is a little blue- and-silver tree less than two feet high, a present from John van Druten. It arrived in an enormous wooden case from New York; they could hardly get it up the seventy-two stairs. . . . That tree bore a strange fruit which at once I recognised as gombobbles. ' This is a gombobble tree,' I said. . . ." Aestheti- cally one shrinks a little from this expansive—as well as expen- sive—book. Christmas Day in the South of France with Mirs Stern sun-bathing on an orange mattress, with drinks on little tables under coloured umbrellas, and High Mass from St. Peter's on the radio, isn't everyone's taste.
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