Fiction

By WILLIAM PLOVER The Nun and the Bandit. By E. L. Grant Watson. (Crossot Press.

Ennii of these novels is about a different part of the world, and to a greater or less extent about people who travel from one country to another : this enables the authors to try and explore that ever fruitful region of human experience in which individuals of the most various racial and social origins meet and react upon one another. The world they write of is one of quirk communications and abrupt contacts with the un- fannliar, the difficult and confused world of today, and the problems they set out are not accordingly brought in every ease to. a happy solution. The Nun and the Bandit stands somewhat.above the rest, for Mr. Grant Watson has managed tolenddeeper implications to his tale. A young novice called Lucy, before taking her final vows in England, returns for a time to 'Western Australia, where she is suddenly carried off into the bush by the kidnappers of a rich man's young daughter, with whom she is out for a walk. The circumstances are credible, but-although the story opens and proceeds well, I began by regretting • the frequent eruptions of dots in the narrative. For example : " . . Turbulent and restless . . the constant spending of money... . a broken happiness, more gleams of sunlight between cloud. . . . And then tho journey to England—that was to make time—She saw that noW-Lto give her time to breathe."

But there are broken rhythms as well as smooth ones, and the book-as a whole leaves an unusually vivid and indeed beautiful impression on the mind. The strangeness of the story, its setting, and the manner of its telling, give it a kind of dream- like momentousness. It has suspense, crime and passion to make .it exciting, and Mr. Grant Watson has an exceptional power of seeing the different sides Of a question ;- so thereader, finding himself all the time on a plane where everything is done to snake him just and compassionate, is prepared for the conclusion that there is no hard-and-fast line between good and evil, that they are intermixed and complementary to each other, and that circumstances alter cases. In no narrow sense, this might be called a religious novel, for it is written with the deep charity and understanding of a calm spirit.

The most ingeaious reviewer would be hard put to it to make a graceful transition from The Nun and the Bandit to If She is Wise ; yet. Miss Campion's Emily, like Mr. Grant Watson's Lucy, is .11. young woman trying to make the:best of herself in die conteinporary world. The title of Mirs Campion's book is taken from a remark of Olive Schreiner's, to the effect that a woman Must " go with the drove " or be trodden down,

" and if she is -wise slie,goes." Emily does not go, but a less downtrodden person it would be hard to imagine. Tough,

malicious, and outspoken, she is the central figure in an often acid. satire, partly on her sex, partly on education, and partly on thingi in general. By attaching Emily- to the

" faltions " staff of St. Agnes's, a New England school, " a small, aristocratic, very churchy finishing factory," " an ant- hilhof intense, quite purposeless female activity," Miss Campion is able to knock4lown a whole wilderness of Aunt Sallies with her trenchant comments. This spirited, devastating, and often very funny exposure of the grimly ludicrous and of womanly qualities twisted and misapplied is obviously the Work, of an uncommonly sincere and humane person. Here is a specimen of Miss Campion at her mest playful, an extract from a letter from the great-aunt of one of Emily's colleagues :

" A fortnight of rough and stormy weather yet all hope for better things with moon full. Terrible things in India, brother striving with brother, not as I remember it when your Uncle Walter took mo there, a bride, and all were so good—even the dark-skinned I . . . YOur Mother tells me the sad news of Maud I Tragic indeed : such a fresh young girl she was, no paint-1 see her novi- in a figured muslin your Uncle Thoobald brought all the 3,000 (or . is it 4 thousand) miles from sweltering India so that she should look her best at a grand soirée given- by our noble friends Mr: and Mrs. Dalmeny. Leach both ` Gone, on now,. alas. H-he of a ,sudden:_coll,c on the golfing field, she of shock at hearing (told abruptly and most ertietly by a Caddie who had seen all) "

Hard-boiled, independent Emily at last ends up in Hitler's ' Germany, where she falls in love (but not 'with a Nazi), and the

book concludes, not .exact6i hafMily; • but 'with Emily " aw

content as she was ever likely to be." forward to

another bitter comedy from-this' 'lively, yet serious author. Books about the late War are' now le'SS in Vogue than-they

*ere, but Captain Conan successfully PreSentS an individual of a kind found in every r -an unruly man ready -for any thing, a fighter rather than ,soldier, a born leader of irregulats able neither to wrap himself sl rietly in red tape nor, at last, to re-adapt himself to 'civilian life. Conan; a sturdy Breton, a draper by trade, became a hero in France :

" Then you never saw that storm- troop of his.; and you'll never know what a real body of fighting men is like. They were mag- nificent ; and they ;were frightful."

And their leader " was the kind of man to make things hot for himself, or even desert if narrow-minded officialism goaded him too far."

He eventually found himself with the French troops in Macc-. donia, and after the Armistice Was with them on their triumphal entry into Bucharest; later in 'Sofia, and at last in the fighting against the Russians in the Dobrudja in the summer, of 1919. .Tlifiplest ilhistratien of Conan's true

character was to be found in his attitude to the fate t3f a *certain; deserter who was a born and irreclaimable coward : the whole

episode constitutes a sound . essay in military psychology. Conan saw his own fate clearly enough : " Suppose that some people wore frank enough to admit to themselves—I won't say that they miss the War, but that it was the only time they were really alive. Well, they'd have to hide the fact like a canker. Yet they never asked to be sent to the War. . . . And then again, all the pluck they've found they've got—what are they going to do with' it Y It will suffocate them. They'll die of apoplexy. . . "

Written from experience, and with French neatness, this is a book to recommend to old soldiers. • Just as much the fruit of experience is Foundation Chain. Here the scene is Scotland and the period pre-War. For some tastes this book will prove too long, too plain, and to realistic ; a little too much in this style : " Ned. wasted no time. He knocked James down, but Tom

wrapped his arms round him. James got up and hit Ned on tho jaw.

It does not seem to matter much what , happens to Too4; Ned or James, for though all the characters May be authentic none of them is particularly interesting. The significance of

the book lies in its 1Pitifn descriptions of life in a mining town in the West of Scotland. It is unpretentious enough; '.ang touched with humour, but there is too much of it r excel* to a voracious appetite, a plateful of oatmeal is better than a potful. But since the length, of novels is seldom determined by attistie•neeessity,.Mr. Perlin need not be singled out for blame.: he has at least been 'able to do something to illustrate the truth that" Sent:rand is as piebald in differences of temper-

. ament, speech and habit. as England." 'Where he fails, and where the author of Tempest in Paradise fails, is just where mime novelists out of ten fall short—An the ability to..transfigure their •knowledge. Almost any reasonably intelligent- and partially educated person with some application and a bent for writing can, given sufficient inapplse, .put, together some sort of a story out of his experience. One does not expect him to be able to give the story a legendary or monumental quality, for such ability is rare, so in mest.easeS one must rest content with experience recorded more or less for its own sake.

The title of Miss Janet Mitchell's book is ironical, being derived from a Japanese allusion to Manchukuo as " an Earthly Paradise." She ventures among people who have been written about with accomplishment by Mr; William Gerhardi and the late Stella BenSon—that is to Say, Russian

emigres in China—but she cannot be measured by the same standards. With a White Russian bias, she writes quite interestingly of uncertainty, rumour, intrigue and romance in Hail* in 1902. 13u1 I hirbin of laic years has been an even

more curious place— than Miss Hebei!, -With: all her infor- ' 'nation, hag managed to make it appear, and alas, her people are only rague .figures in a mist of elich6y.