MARTHA AND MARY. By J. Anker Larsen. Trans- lated from
the Danish by Arthur G. Chater. (Knopf. 7s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Larsen, the author of this unusual and extremely beautiful novel, is a novelist of the first order, and a writer of European importance. Seldom do the presses send out a story of such clarity, depth and spiritual innocence : there has been no serious novel in the past years shedding so much creative light on modern civilization and its deepest problems.
Yet, while the book will come as a message of great purity and import to thoughtful people, especially those perplexed for choice of some bridge between religion and behaviour, the novel with its sincere, human tale of two sisters stands by itself as fiction of a fine and moving sort.
Martha and Mary tells a simple, domestic story of two little country girls, separated from each other in infancy, going through life with its general round of work and marriage, until they come together again, late in life, each bringing the other the quiet comfort they need. Mary, the elder of the twins, is a mystic, while Martha the realist, no less full of sensitiveness and imagination, expresses herself best in work which her nimble fingers make so easy for her. There is something lovely about each of them. On them, on the minor characters in the book, on the farms and fields where they go, a rare beauty falls, which springs from the author's own conception of life itself. In no sense a problem novel, Martha and Mary has all the definition and conviction of great realistic fiction, and the tenderness and love for the human 'World that makes the tales of Hans Andersen so poignant and vivid. At the same time it expresses, without dogmatizing, a definite point of view and peaceably reconciles the temporal and the eternal impulses of mankind. The work of translation has been done excellently for this book, which is undoubtedly a roost important contribution to contemporary literature.
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