PORTRAIT OF A VILLAGE
By Francis Brett Young In this book (Heinemann, 8s. 6d.) Mr. Francis Brett Young continues the tradition of Our Village and Cran- ford, though there is not even the slightest ,thread of story running through it. Mr. Brett Young says in his preface that when he wrote This Little World, a multitude of correspondents assured him that they knew the village he wrote of, and even the people ; and they will say the same of this work, however imaginary the village of Monks Norton in Worcestershire may be. Everybody is there—that is, anybody who is at all nice—and we know them all : the terrific dominating old lady, the upstarts, the schoolmistress, the good and bad farmers, the retired captain, and so on. They are all written about in an impecc- able prose, the texture of which is unbroken, a prose that may serve as a pattern of what the book is like. It is too unbroken, too perfect, so that we never get a peep through the surface to what goes on underneath. We all know those people, that countryside, in the same way that Mr. Brett Young does, and he illuminates us no further, just as Miss Joan Hassall's excellent wood-engravings remind us of what we have seen, and reveal nothing new. The whole book then, is extremely pleasant, but it tells us nothing, and does nothing for us. It is so complete and satisfactory of its kind, that it does not even set us musing or wonder- ing. The truth is that though this village and its people are imaginary, they are not imaginatively enough conceived to be creative. We are given admirable photographs, certainly, but that is all.
Previous page
