Fiction

BY L. A. G. 9ramici.

Apples by Night. By H. A. Manhood. (Cape. 7s. 6d.)

Mess MARGARET KENNEDY'S new novel centres round a query. If it were a detective story, it might be called " What Hap- pened at Inisbar ? " In a very minor sense, I suppose it is a

detective story, though the central riddle has nothing to do with crime. When the celebrated singer Elissa Koehn. pub-

lished her memoirs- they contained a chapter entitled " A Summer in Ireland." Hope picks the hook up eagerly, for she has heard many legends of the singer's visit to the family in Ireland many years before. To her amazement, she reads in the chapter (a delicious parody of the average singer's memoirs) that Elissa and Dick Napier were lovers. Indignant at having

been told nothing about this, she inquires for the facts. Miss Kennedy gives us the facts, and the letters written by various members of the house party .coacerning the event. Elissa certainly came to stay, and she and Dick certainly disap- peared for three days, Dick returning in time to save Barney from the attentions of the local doctor. What had really happened ?

A Long Time Ago gives Miss Kennedy the opportunity to exercise her characteristic gifts. She has assembled a delight- ful gallery of portraits, her dialogue is as fresh as ever, and she keeps her uncanny power of making even an argument about the powers of rival imaginary singers interesting to the reader. One of the happiest portraits is the briefest—the ancient local doctor :

" Kerran looked at the ancient, bone-handled scalpels, the unwieldy curved needles, all of them blunt and rusty, tho jointed artery clips, and thought of a wood-carving set which he had once had as a boy and which had been left out by accident for six weeks in the rain . . .

' But you won't operate if you think this attack has a chance of subsiding 1 ' pleeded Konen.

Ah Not at all. Well have it out in the flick of an ass's tail, the way he'll never feel the miss of it.' "

Mrs. MacKansas has collected at her Corsican home as many famous authors as she can lay hands on, and has provided them with every comfort and convenience for the exercise of their art, including the famous view from her terrace. On the whole, however, the arts do not prosper, and her guests repay her poorly by indulging in all manner of quarrels, jealousies and intrigues. This state of affairs lasts until Mr. MacKansas discovers Sir Kensal Rise, whose speciality is best sellers about clean-limbed young men, making advances to his

wife. He sends the whole house-party packing, and they adjourn with Mrs. MacKansas to her yacht. Here nature takes a hand, and the characters are subjected to a sterner test than those provided by leisure and boredom.

Several writers have tried their hand at this sort of book since Mr. Oke wrote Frolic Wind, and it cannot be pretended

that the comparisons are all in his favour ; but he has a very individual voice, and is capable of notes which none of his competitors have hitherto sounded. Of Frolic Wind I re- member, not the witticisms and the scholarship, but the feeling and genuine beauty of the second part, starting with the scene of the bathe a deux. In the same way I shall remember Wanton. Boys by a number of wholly admirable scenes, includ-

ing poor Miss Plainbotham's theft and all that followed it, Miss Littlemuch's talk to the same lady for her own good, and the last chapters, which show the reactions of the various charac- ters to the fear of death.

I was one of the few reviewers to enjoy Mr. Darby, and I hope, as an admirer of Mr. Martin Armstrong's art, that I shall be likewise singular in failing to be very enthusiastic over Lover's Leap. Philip, Rose and Meriel all record their emotional histories in their diaries. Philip loves Rose so in- sistently that he irritates and loses her. He is then loved by Meriel in exactly the same manner, and runs away. Rinally, having learnt wisdom, he returns to Rose : " In this pause in my relations with both of them I have ample time to ponder on all that has passed in these two years and 8, half, and I have come to sea how curiously parallel the two cases are the ease of Rose and me with the case. of me and Meriel, for in the first I played the part which Meriel played in the second."

Rose says very much the same ; and the trouble with Lover's Leap is, I think, that the cases are parallel, and " the voices" speak in precisely similar accents. Mr. Armstrong has differentiated between their characters perfectly in theory ; but when we come to their diaries, the man,. the sensible woman, and the foolish woman all write alike. That the writing is sensitive and distinguished need not be said—Mr.

Armstrong is incapable of anything else. Lover's Leap is a serious, delicate, penetrating study of the emotions of credible characters,. but it seems to me somehow to lack strength and backbone; and to be not quite good enough for the author of St. Christopher's Day.

Volatile and vainglorious, August came home from his globe-trotting to the bay-settlement of Polden, determined to bring it up to date and make it an important town, with a post office, a bank, and a herring fishery of its own. After long struggles with the gentle, unambitious villagers, he was partly successful, remaining blithely himself both in success and failure. The villagers are charming, and it is for their sake that we rejoice in August's successes and sorrow for his failures. Mr. Harnsun's style, straightforward and full of humour, is exactly suited to his story. August is well off the beaten track, and should please almost every kind of reader.

Herr Jellinek, a German writer new to British readers, takes us to Czecho-Slovakia and bids us observe the pea. santry. Uproar in the Village reveals him as a clear and

vigorous writer with a hearty taste for melodrama and the power to make it convincing. He describes three occasions, on each of which the villagers were justified in their perturba- tion. In the first story, t. judge discovers. that a supposed murderer's alibi involves the honour of his own wife. In the second, autumn manoeuvres in the country are complicated

by the mess cook's discovering that- one of the lieutenants has been carrying on with his furneee. In the third story, the guilt of a woman who has murdered her husband is unwittingly revealed by her child at the. feast which celebrates her wedding to a lover. We look forward to reading a full-length novel by Herr Jellinek.

Mr. Manhood's new collection-of stories, as its title suggests, shows a new and welcome side of his talent. The night of his imagination has abounded hitherto in mandrakes and toad- stools rather than in fruit so normal and sweet as the apple, and he proves that his powers as a story-teller do not in the least depend upon these macabre properties :

" At last Henri has finished the complicated business of closing the CafiS Bouillabaisse for the night. You would think he was preparing it for God's own reception, so great is his care. Shutters have been slotted, cruets brought to harbour ; cigarette ends collected into a paper bag for an unknown beggar. Fishbonee in a bucket look like crumpled: snow-ferns. Chairs have been piled upon tables until the Café seems to be full of mighty, wrestling crabs. Mouse-traps are choicely baited and distributed, the chain dock wound and shaken until it responds with a leisurely chime. One by one the five gas-jets are extinguished. Seen through the steam-braided glass of the kitchen door the Café • has a submerged appearance, as if the sea had claimed it, made of it. a paradise common to the souls of bouWabaissed fish."

This individual accuracy of description serves Mr. Manhood well, not only in the happy tale of Saint Henri, but in the title story, and in Cynicism, a piece rich in suggestion, which shows Mr. Manhood at his best. Excellent, too, are Wilful Murder and End Piece. Egg in Road is a capital little story, and one can understand why Mr. Manhood wished to give it an Irish setting ; but the lingo spoken by his two old women was never heard in Ireland, and I trust never will be. By their " ye's " ye shall know them : the misuse of this pronoun at once betrays the unaccustomed tongue ; not that anything so subtle is needed in this case. Altogether, Apples by Nigh; should advance and .extend Air. Manhood's reputation.