UNTIL I FIND— Bp Pinclion The publisher of this bOok
(Michael Joseph, 7's. 6d.) claims that it is a story mined out of the author's memories of his own boyhood . . ." and the author that the " characters and situa- tions . . . are wholly imaginary." (He must have forgotten that Robert Louis Stevenson appears in the first chapter.) As the settings are so much more con- vincing than the characterisation and situations, there is probably some truth in both statements. Hugh Vallan- court, wandering in the New Forest, soliloquises : " You needn't fear me, silly lapwing. I like to hunt, and when hunt I must go on and on until I find —But it's not eggs nor nests nor fledglings I want ; it's something else, lapwing . . . and I don't know what it is. . . ." Mr. Vallaneourt, revenue official, is a hard father ; Hugh's mother is half gipsy, and it soon becomes clear what Hugh is going to find. If we can believe that gipsy life is as gay and splendid as Mr. Pinchon describes it, we shall glow with satisfaction when he finally joins up with the gipsies and turns his feet towards Spain " and all the world." This is good wind-on-the- heath stuff.
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