FICTION.
THE BRIARY BUSH.* IT is difficult for a contemporary to come to any absolute conclusion about the-merits-of so extremely:topical a book as Mr. Floyd Dell's Briary Bush. The book is concerned with the problems of a set of modern young people in Chicago— writers, artists and journalists. To those who know anything of the life of young men and women of the present day it will be of quite special interest, for it is written with a.great deal of insight and a transparent candour. The theories by which. such young peoplenretryingto live their lives are not idealized, nor are the forces of reaction. We have said that the scene of the book is laid.in Chicago, and the reader who has studied the same sort of phenomenon in London will notice that the scene could not be shifted to Bloomsbury without distinct modification.
It is difficult to lay one's finger on the source of this trans- atlantic difference, for it is a subtle one. As the lives of the "modems" and Bohemians are, generally speaking, negative reactions to environment, perhaps it would be easiest to express this difference in the terms of the life against which it is reacting. The forces of worldliness and of convention in England, then, are much gentler, much more mature, much less grotesque, much more insidious than those in America. From such forces it will be obvious that the reaction will be rather different.
* 27a Briary Bush, By Floyd Da, LondOn: W, Helotsoann, 171, od, Dow The Briary Bush is a sequel to Mr. Floyd_ Dell's Mooncalf, a book which attracted considerable_ attention a little while ago, and is the story of a modern marriage. The young man and woman who contract this union have both come from simple and extremely pedestrian homes. The girl, Rose-Anne, has seen her mother's domesticity and the hum- drum circumstances of life in a small town spoil her father's chances. He who might have been a very fine writer has been pressed and pushed by everyday things till first-rate creative work became impossible to him. He is a clergyman, and has settled down to a sweetstempered, cynical impotence with no power of producing anything beyond a weekly sermon which is above the heads of his- parishioners. Rose-Anne deter.. mines that she will never play the dulling domestic part that her mother has played or see that quizzical light in her father's eyes which seems to say "women are all alike" The young man whom she marries—Felix—is, like her father, a writer, and Rose-Anne is determined that there shall be no repetition of the family history. The marriage shall be a. true partnership. There shall be no " home " with a big "H," for which money must be got at any sacrifice of artistic honesty. They will tell each other everything, but they will never ask each other questions or be a tie to one another. This modern marriage ideal they set out to live amid. a circle of admiring and inquisitive friends. The history of the marriage and of how Reality—the briery bush of the old song that "pricks my heart so sere "—gets them at last is the theme of the book. It is a book which will be valued chiefly by those who are facing the same problems as Rose-Anne and. Felix Fay.
It can best, perhaps, be judged as a work of art, and not as a pamphlet, by an older generation, whose problems are no longer urgent and whose dilemmas must have manifested themselves a little differently. But similar problenaa have always presented themselves to artists of all sorts and all ages, and have led to controversies with which we are all familiar. By those who have no knowledge of this recurrent dilemma the book will probably be viewed with considerable disapproval. Into the rightness or the wrongness of that disapproval we do not propose to enter here. It is enough to say that such problems are being faced to-day not only in this city, but in. many cities all through England and America, and that, whether we view, the attitude of mind portrayed with approval or disapproval, Mr. Floyd Dell's Briary Bush constitutes a valuable piece of evidence. We may remind Mr. Floyd Dell's English readers once more that they will not find exact, but only approximate, parallels in England, and that the inexactness of detail should not blind them to the charm, delicacy and balance of a deeply *moving and interesting story.
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