6 JULY 1944, Page 20

Fiction

MR. MASSIE has written a very long, careful, sincere book. whi will appeal to those who like a very intricate plot well held togeth with emotionalism and with a certain gentle but obstinate kind sententiousness about life and beauty and so on. For my own p• while admiring certain ideas it contains, I found it incredible as whole, and I wished that it was less preachy in its tenderness, a in general less solid and deliberate. For so strange a story it is f too circumstantial, I think ; but strange it is—and there are man people to whom it will appeal strongly, for that reason.

It begins well. A soldier of the last war, bored and lonely France, helps another soldier to write letters to the girl he is love with. He develops an obsessional interest in the progress the love-affair he thus directs. His friend goes on leave, marn• the girl of the fetters, returns to France and is killed before he c even talk to Maurice Quinton of this happy consummation. Lat Maurice, wounded in the hand, is invalided out, breaks off engagement to his own girl, and by a succession of very stran events is led deep into the fate of that Phoebe on whom he ha pondered so much when writing her another man's letters.. Th fate, which he takes as his, seeks to unravel, and sees through to end, is very odd indeed, and 'takes a great deal of explaining, the more as it is presented to us both as an allegory and as succession of facts. I do not really know what we are meant t make of it—but it did keep me curious, in a protesting, relucta fashion, to the end, and I imagine that many people will, find interesting and even moving.

The Looking-Glass is a huge, untidy book about a whole lot people in a small American town called Reedyville. It spreads ow'

a great many years, and moves back and forth in an undisciplin and confusing manner, to establish this life-story or that characte

sketch. There are some touching episodes and a great deal of ye good and lively dialogue, but the general effect is of overcrowdi and formlessness, and one gets a weary feeling of having read it before in many other, better-made novels.

Cluny Brown is another of Miss Margery Sharp's neat little ent tainments—this time about a lively London girl who gets pack• off to Devonshire as a parlourmaid, and encounters some crisp a fantastic adventures there. Miss Sharp's admirers will know CX3C what they are getting, and will probably find it very suitable b time reading for these nights in which some part of our attenti must, inevitably be reserved for noises off, in the sky.

KATE O'BRIEN.