Fiction .

BY L. A. G. STRONG.

A CHARACTER in one of Mr. Maurice Baring'inoVels remarked that- certain religious truths; being unmanly inexpressible, were -none the worse for being represented in simple or even in childish form. • To this fact we owe the existence of parables. There are, moreover, parables which will not hear.interpreta- tion,,for the terms in which the truth is stated are in grin-- selves a part, of, the truth-, The same holds gocid ofpoette•ntuL• romantic truthi. We' Cannot interpret or paraphrase a poem without loss, because it is the only way of saying something Which must otherwise go unsaid. The language -is a part of the message : the scenes or gestures which inspire the mind to perceive poetic and romantic truth are unique, and inseparable from the truth perceived. Mr. Stuart's novel, Try the Sky, is an allegory combining spiritual and poetic and romantic truths,' and I ata not going to try and interpret it. It has four chief characters. The narrator is wyoung,Irishman with experience of flying. He and the girl he loves, Carlotta, join in a voyage up the Danube with two strangers. Carlotta, whose senses are tuned beyond the ordinary pitch, believes suffering -to be the only ultimate reality in life. She first fears, then. welcomes, love. The strangers are. Beltane, a simple, worldly creature, and a Red Indian girl named Butter. cup. The party land in a city, where Carlotta, trying to save the life of a hunted Nazi, is accidentally shot. The doctor who attends her* turns out title:the:inventor Of a wonderful aeroplane,- and invites the four to accompany him upon her maiden flight. They set off on what promises to -be an un- paralleled spiritual adventure. Its conclusion tests the nee- rator's wisdom to the full : but hehas learned something which enables him to bear with equanimity the change from a - voyage of mystery and illimitable hope to a breakdown in an Old car upon a wet road in Kildare, .Mr. Stuart's message readers must be left to hear in his . own words. In a brief introduction Mr. Compton Mackenzie pronounces the book to be of profound spiritual significance tp .:the modern world. What is certainly of proffiund 1 cance is that a young novelist of genius has emerged who is concerned with spiritual problems. For the moment, how-: ever, I think that' Mr. Stuart's chief message is to him..;eif. Ike is struggling to evolve a speech which shall enable hirrao say what is in him to say. His voice is not yet quite definitely his own : there are echoes of other writers. Moreover, parts

earth, as repiesented Buttercup, i O ri

ghe book are tentative and experimental. When he Suggeits t t the mysticism of ea antagonistic to the mysticism of romantic love,' he-seems to lie' &infusing the mysticism of earth with the mysticism of-the savage ; which is quite a different thing. To sink into 'the earth, to become one with tree and stone; is riot destructive: Of romantic love. There is, in a real sense, no difference between people and places : • the body is the:" place " of the soul. Such considerations, however, are outside the scope of a brief review, the business of which is to state that .Mr., stuart's tale is very beautifully told and to .suggest that, if qean perfect the speech he needs, he may well be the man we are looking for. • ' In harp contrast, Mr. Gibbs brilliantly presents to us:the eiveryday. His hill is part of a suburb near 'London—. Its spacious days are over. The elms in the park are felled (though a few remain, as the last chapters show) ;• the land is dotted with " desirable residences," and the last flower of the quire's line has been, given in Marriage.to a descendant of tjiose who humbly served his ancestors. Ill at ease, she tii-ins lier face towards an alien sunshine. She has fallen in hive With her father-in-law's neer-do-wed adopted sod, and when Stephen comes home early from the office with one of his

bilious attacks, the fat is in the fire. The story of old Samuel Hollidy and his kith and kin is only one of the threads which Air. Gibbs has here entwined for our delight. There Me besides, the story of the schoolmistress, the bank clerk, the girl pianist whom Samuel befriended, the girl who was going • to have a baby, and her young man, wiaftlinablems were so

• drastically solved by the elm tree. Out of thein till Mr. Gibbs has constructed an ingenious and excellent story. On the Hill is one of the few modern novels of which one can say that it might with advantage have been longer:— . .

Three books follow of which the central character is a lady. The novel which is here presented to us as Edgar Wallace's last rings down a splendid curtain on a wonderful career. As

the whole point of a thriller is that one shall know nothing of 'the story beforehand, I cannot summarize it here. It baffled

;me completely, of course, and the ending was a complete and convincing surprise. What, seems especially noteworthy about it, apart from the appalling ingeniousness of its con- struction, is the fact that it hinges upon character as much as upon sheer cireurnstance. Those two Airierican footmen,/or

instance The ladyhad every excuse for being frightened. So, for that matter; had the central character of:Pacific. I would never have 4ielieVed that a single woman could' have

prothiced such an effect- upon: a number of men. Having

safely laid down Mr. Carse's story, ,I again do not believe it ; but I had to believe it for as long as Pacific was in my hands.

Lucia was discovered-when the, boat on-which she had-stowed berseIfiiiMY was only a short distance front the SouthAmeriefin port, but, owing to an inconvenient revolution, the captain could not put balk,' He confined her to a cabin; and' most of the crew never even set eyes upon her: Still, before the

voyage was over, there were two and murders,: and sundry other deeds of violence ; and the ?horde and routine of the entire ship was upset. The captain was worse: affected

than anybody. Mr. Carse has drawn, him very skilfully, as' he has Henig and Larry, the only men to lie:kind to Lucia

without, a motive. Pacific takes some time. to make its effect, but Mr. Carse gets there in the end. He has a curious passion for things that .flap and flop and slop and slap and - MEM.. • Eyed -people's caps make a slapping sound when they put them on; and as for stewards emptying buckets !

Mr. Shaw Desmond is neither an exact nor. a subtle writer, ' but he knows his jOb, and his new novel is in-some ways un-

deniably impressive.. The prostitute with the heart of gold, who sells' herself for the Sake of her allifig ehildi.is not one of my favourite characters in fiction, and I would rather have

heard FlOriie's Cockney accent with'-enji-Orrirears than with

Mr. Desmond's. All the same, I was unable to leave the book until I had finished it. Florrie was a chOrus gfil, and, despite numerous temptations, a good girl too. It was hardship that

brought her down, not' be&ittie of what it meant for herself, but for little Artie, who at ,six could neither walk nor speak.

Between him and her love for Anstruther Dalrymple, Florrie

had no chance. Anstriither is as pretty a. portrait of a scowl- ' drel as I can call to mind, and many of the subsidiary charac-

ters, ineldding the genteelEtliel,iireivell drawn. Mr. Desmond flinches from nothing, and his story is decidedly not for the squeamish. The ingredients of tragedy are here, but, though impressed, we are unmoved. Everything in the story might well have happened to such a girl as Florrie, but.Florri¢ herself is an abstraction, aikd the story therefore is a compelling treatise '-on the horrors of 'prostitution rather than a work of art.

No one who -has read these coin:inns will doulit the whole- . heartedoess of rny_adriration for Mx.,07Plalierty. In vivid, . objective writing 'he has no superior to-day,- and sinne,of isis short stories are among the finest of our time. He has written fine novels, too ; but his newest, The Martyr, finds him, only

. occasionally at his . best. Its main theme is the' coining of the " Staters ".to a small town in the south-west of Ireland one day in 1922, and their; easy defeat of the -handful Of Irregulars who tried -to hold it against them: The .fighting scenes are without exception excellently done, and throughout • there are flashes of the, authentic O'Flaherty : but Brian Crosbie is too weak a character to hold a boolc'together, or,to

• matter much, whatever_hapPened to him, and the end. of Ore story I found frankly incredible. The Martyr is abundantly worth reading, for the sake of the good scenes in it ; but'it /1; a. disappointment after Skerrett.