The Grim Smile of the Five Towns. By Arnold Bennett.
(Chap- man and Hall. 5s.)—Mr. Arnold Bennett is at his best in short stories of the "Five Towns," though it must be confessed that he very much oversteps the boundaries of good taste in the last story of all. The three tales which concern Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Cheswardine are extremely entertaining, but the sketch entitled "The Death of Simon Fuge" presents an even more vivid picture of life in the five industrial towns to which Mr. Arnold Bennett so often introduces his readers. While most of these stories give accounts of the Five Towns as seen from within, in this study Mr. Arnold Bennett describes them as seen from without—through the eyes, that is, of the Curator to a "certain department of antiquities at the British Museum." The author contrives most cleverly to present a picture which he himself knows intimately in the light in which it would appear from the totally different standpoint of an intelligent outsider. This story is in its way a literary tour de force. The shrewdness of the counsel given by Uncle Dan in the little story, "From One Generation to Another," is very entertaining, and the practical application of his advice, which takes the oil gentleman himself rather disagreeably by surprise, is most amusingly narrated.
Previous page
