Fiction
8s.) (Michael Joseph. 8s. 6d.)
Mn. OTAOLAIN'S work has all the vividness of the practised writer's, the sharp definition of character, the sway of the emotions, the sense that you too are living in this life re- created before you. Above all, it has the necessary feeling of tension, of this thing that you are living with being of importance to you, that it all matters. This is, perhaps, merely to say in other words that it has a philosophic core ; it puts one of the problems of how we are to live.
You're an idealist. And like all Irish idealists you've gone off the rails. They go like bulls against the dirty, material things of life, and before they know where they are go so far that they're going against life itself. It's all vght, my boy, to have fine values. Take care that they're not values that have no earthly relation at all to the world as it is made. You fought for fine things in Ireland. Don't get so sour as to go the other way just because somebody stole your bun : which was probably a bun that Acver was on sea or land.
So Father Leonard Hanafey, the Roman Catholic priest in New York, to his brother Frankie, recently escaped from the police in Ireland. To Frankie, the man stilt fighting for an impossible and now smutched ideal, the argument—which can indeed be turned to too easy an acceptance—is unconvincing ; but he has become so much a part of rebellion itself that he has ceased to be able to construct. Yet if the problem that the priest states is the theme of this work (recommended by the Book Society), it has as a subsidiary theme Variations on the Love of Ireland, which may be that for Ireland as a hopeful Utopia ; as a senti- mental memory, which is how another brother St. John adores it ; as a historical memory which is how the American-Irish dote on it ; or as a country with a delightful climate. But the book is no arid thesis ; the story, which has only a vague conclusion, carries us on, with its tenderness (which occasionally falls into sentimentality, as with Jo, who never told her love for Frankie), its gentle satire, its vivid descriptions and its nervous scenes, exciting, astonishing, and sometimes humorous.
We have had many war books, but none, so far as I know, about the Indian troops in France. In Across the Black Waters (for lack of an official stamp, recommended by the Reviewer of The Spectator) Dr. Anand, continuing The Village, fills the gap. In it Lalu, rescued from prison in the earlier work by Owen Sahib, Adjutant of the 69th, faces the war and faces it well. But it is not as a description of war that the book achieves its great interest—indeed there are one or two rather odd military errors—but as a revelation of what the average Sepoy felt and thought during that strange adventure. Dr. Anand, who has matured a great deal since his early books, writes with his usual honesty and integrity of purpose, and without the rather shrill note which used to jar a little and spoil the artistic consistency of his early work. We are asked to like the sympathetic Owen as much as the touching Lalu, as they have their being in the nightmare existence of Messines and Festubert. As far as thoughts and feelings go, the book has the touch of complete authenticity, and we follow with confidence the reactions of the various characters, Lain, Uncle Kirpu, and the unpleasant Subah. Besides being a book of profound interest to the student of India, it can stand on its own feet as a readable novel. At first The Gantillons (recommended by the Book Society) may seem irritating. The reader may ask himself why a book should be written about such mediocre people. Why should we bother about the fortunes of a parson's daughter turned governess, about her tiresomely selfish and stupid brother who is a theological don at Oxford, about the absurd Dr. Gantillon, his flighty wife, and his very disagreeable sister? Are there not more fundamental things to write and think about? But Mr. Liddell disarms such criticism by suggesting that in these harried and noisy days scenes of domestic life may come as a rest, and even a 'refreshment, and it must be said that the book is written with extreme care. There is an amusing background of fanatical homeopathists, a seductive archaeologist, a sub- normal girl, a flighty wife, and the central charming but rather dim figure of the governess who lets life escape her. Jr is not a book which overflows with vitality, but if you can cast aside urgencies far enough to enter this haven, its very irrelevance may provide a rest.
Moon Tide, like most of its characters, resembles the custard- apple in having a harsh exterior and a pulpy-sweet inside. More- over, if the tough nuts are not soft within, they are "nuts," which is to say "crackers." The Swede, who has no Other name, has a terrible past in which he has to kill his brother that he may be eaten by a boatload of wrecked mariners, and gets shoved when drunk into the pleasant job (or yob) of looking after a bait-barge for a Japanese in San Pedro. He rescues a girl from suicide, and they settle down to an idyllic existence, into which tragedy stalks. The background is one of ruthlessness and egotism, - but sentimentality prevails throughout the swiftly-told story ; and there is no doubt that Mr. Robertson has a talent for telling a story. But his two worlds, that of San Pedro and escapist fantasy, do not mix.
Moon Tide is the Daily Mail Book of the Month, and its fantasy is challenged by the Evening Standard Book of the Month, Don't Mr. Disraeli, a phantasmagoria of the Victorian Age (which stretches from Lady Caroline Lamb to the Marx Brothers), goes backwards and forwards in time at will, is based on a Romeo and Juliet plot, and co-stains a super-melo- dramatic villain, besides several amusing characters. It is a first-rate idea for a rollicking farce, and if it went like a whirl- wind and never gave us pause for thou.tht would read like an uproarious travesty. But it goes too, slowly ; here and there the jokes are a little laboured. The regular rot:tion of scenes and re- appearances of characters comes to seem mechanical. Yet if some of it is tedious, there are some good moments, and it would probably go very well if read aloud. BONAMY DOBREE.
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