UNCLE LAWRENCE By Oliver Warner
This short and charming book (Chatto and Windus, 5s.) is an account of a visit which Mr. Warner paid some fifteen years ago to an uncle who lived on a small island in Lake Erie, Ontario. " Uncle Lawrence," as Mr. Warner quietly and effec- tively shows, was a distinctive character ; a proud, shy, un- ambitious man, kindly and easily imposed on, who in his long years of voluntary exile had retained much of the ingenuous character of a simple child. Uncle Lawrence," judged by the standards of the twentieth century, was a failure, the biggest failure perhaps in a community where success would have been a rarity. But in Mr. Warner he seems to have in- spired affection and even a sort of admiration rather than pity. Mr. Warner builds up his character clearly with gradual objec- tive touches, though without attempting to analyse his relation's nature; and his circle of fellow exiles, different in cir- cumstances and occupations and drawn together by a common anxiety to keep up their self-respect and a common affection for a country which few had much chance of seeing again, is sympathetically and tactfully described. Mr. Warner declares that he had made several attempts to make the substance of this book the theme either of a novel or of a short story. It is not a matter for regret that he failed to do so, for in this unpretentious and evocative chapter of autobiography it has surely found its appropriate form.
Previous page
