THE GATES ARE OPEN. By Cranston Neville. (Arnold. 78. 6d.)
Non-musical people will find in the story of Noel Lane much to entertain them. All the same, it is primarily a novel for the musical. It deals with the education of an artist whose artistic development is a matter of experience. His luck and misfortune, his joys and jealousies, the influence of his friends and, above all, of his wife, are all seen as means to his artistic salvation. Many of the minor characters are admirably drawn, notably that of Blumenthal, the Jewish entrepreneur, who has nothing good in his moral make-up but his artistic genius. The extent to which that genius absolves him in the eyes of the reader, and in those of the best woman in the book, is wonderfully well explained and throws a real light upon the duality of the Jewish nature. It is a pleasure to see the "artistic temperament," as it shows itself, in the hero and the villain, treated from an original standpoint. Mr. Cranston Neville is an actor, and he obviously regards every man's soul as the artist within him.
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