Fiction

The Man at the Door. By Millie Toole; (Dent. 10s. 6d.) (Harvill Press. 10s. 6d.)

Another. Pamela. By Upton Sinclair. (Werner Laurie. 12s. 6d.) A Breathless Child. By Frances Bellerby. (Collins. 10s. 6d.) So many books that demand space and attention, so little space to give them ! The reviewer is always having to decide whether to deal more or less adequately with four books, or inadequately with six or seven. It is often a question of inadequate notice or none at all. All the above books are worth far more space than can be given them.

A novelist as celebrated as M. Romains will forgive a brief note, so that space can go to those who need it more. In two novels, one

long, one short, M. Romains examines time. When we say So-and-so is dead,'We speak from a point in time. If we could go back in time, we would find him " still " alive. Is there a past which exists

independently of us, and, if so, are there means whereby we could return to it ? Some of the stars, With their possible planetary systems, are distant from us by millions of light years. Besides the distance, abysses of time divide us from them. We see them " now " in what is their millions-of-years-old past. Is there a swifter measure- ment than light—i.e. thought—and can we telepathically jump those vast abysses ? The stories in which these speculations are embedded are most convincingly documented, even if the character-drawing is a little dry.

I do not remember reading any of Miss Toole's earlier books, and I am sorry to have missed them. An isolated household in the Lake District consists of five people. The husband, a prim refugee from reality much older than his wife, has a feeling for nature, and retreats into the mountains at the first hint of anything difficult. His wife, aged about thirty-five, is practical, unpassionate, and keeps the household going Single-handed. The couple have an adopted daughter of sixteen, devoted to the wife, and ready to resent jealously any outsider who might compete for her attention. There is also the husband's unmarried sister, likewise devoted to the wife ; and—for a time—an aged retainer. Enter to this set-up a spiv-like distatit cousin; a young man of twenty-five. On the run, and seeing a chance of security, he proceeds to dig himself in, and makes the wife's affections his first object.

The resulting situation Miss Toole develops with realism and skill. I am not quite happy about the violent end : and the spiv cousin was on the way out anyhow : but the whole book is of high quality, the work of a writer deeply interested in life, and it should not be missed.

Life and Love teased me so much that I kept it back from my last batch for longer consideration. The opening seemed unbearably

self-conscious, but something made me persist, and I was glad.

Even now I am not wholly sure what it was that held me, reluctant and often angry, to this long tale of a priggish egotist and a slapdash, silly girl. The hero is one of those insufferable perfectionists who,

if he cannot take a girl to the.most expensive restaurant and the best place in the stalls, will not take her anywhere, will not even see or write to her. The girl was equally tiresome in her own way, but on the whole my sympathies were with her. There are, for compen- sation, a most likeable barmaid and a discreet narrator ; but I think what held me was the book's mature wisdom, and the fact that its author indubitably knows a great deal about life and love.

Julietta comes with the warm commendation of Miss Nancy Mitford, and we at once see why. It has something of the same

wit, the same bubbles of rational absurdity. I fumble towards suggesting its quality by saying that Mlle de Vilmorin has a touch of Jane Austen—whom she would have shocked profoundly : of Ada Leverson, whom she surpasses in imagination and craftsman- ship : and of Miss Mitford, whom she does not surpass.

" I must be mad ! ' cried Mme. Valendor suddenly.

" I cannot say,' answered the old lady."

This, between strangers on a train, may give you a hint.

Having emerged at last from the chronicles of Lanny Budd, Mr. Sinclair has had the idea of giving us a modern version of Pamela. He is in high spirits, and scores a number of shrewd and amusing hits. I greatly respect thi's Grand Old Boy of American letters, but I am afraid the army of Lanny Budd fans will not go all the way with this simple and good-hearted country girl who writes home to her family about her adventures in service. Mrs. Frances Bellerby has made a name with those Who respect delicate and scrupulous writing by her poems and her stories. Sensitiveness to word and image has been hers from the first. A Breathless Child shows a move forward in craftsmanship and precision. She is still sometimes uncertain of form, still tempted to rely on perception for its own sake : The Starling, for all its under- standing, is apt to straggle : but her voice is always in tune, and