ADOLPHE 1920. By John Rodker. (The Aquila Press, £1 ls.).—This
is not everybody's novel. It is the close study of a sophisticated and yet confused lover : he is in the grip of an affair which brings him little joy, but seems to be an inevitable part of himself. He vacillates helplessly ; wants to be rid of Angela for ever and at the same time wants her upon any terms, rather than face that oblivion." The style is highly-wrought and poetic ; it moves with an iambic rhythm and, here and there, falls into blank verse. The great virtue of the book is in its understanding of the main character's interior life, his subjectivity. It is a brave thing to challenge comparison with the Adolphe of 1806, and Mr. Rodker's novel is far smaller in scale than Benjamin Constant's : nevertheless, he is very successful in portraying a kind of No Man's Land of the soul.
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