F IC TI ON.
GREEN APPLE HARVEST.*
Ix some parts of the country instead of picking flowers it is the custom in the spring to get a sod of downland turf-moss, daisies, sorrel, bedstraw, blue milkwort, grasses and all—to bring it into the house and set it in a tray. This is Miss Sheila Kaye. Smith's method when she writes about country people in Sussex. Green Apple Harvest is an admirable example of the turf-cutting process. The whole society round Bodingmares, Company's Hatch, and Pookwell is presented to the reader; he is temporarily made free of the community, so far assimilated into it that, by the time he has got halfway through the book, he will most certainly have ceased to think of Robert, Clem, Polly, and Hannah as yeomen or gipsies. He will see them merely as men and women whose minds, while remaining as peculiar to the individual as is the mind of every man and woman, have yet been stamped and, as it were, given a relish by their environment. It is a great deal this easy introduction into another society that makes fiction so stimulating and yet so recreative to read. When, in the body, we are introduced among a new set of people, we are shy of them, they are shy of us, but in a book like Miss Kaye-Smith's we ourselves are invisible and, moreover, have our author always ready with her little bit of window-glass to fit into the forehead of whosoever's actions we desire to under- -stand. The novel contains two very remarkable psychological studies : an exceedingly ambitious one of Bob Fuller, with his over-sexed, visionary emotions and his crude and simple mind, and another much more straightforward one of his brother, Clem Fuller, who is one of the few really charming "virtuous apprentices" of fiction. Again, the author has painted some very elaborate set-pieces, two country weddings, subtly differ- entiated, a half-ludicrous funeral, and some very effective land- scapes seasoned with introspection. Bob Fuller's heredity is very subtly conceived. His exterior, of an oafish " buck " with check breeches and an oiled forehead-curl, is completely visualized. The author's handling of his mental experiences is, as a rule, completely convincing, her understanding of him constituting Indeed a remarkable feat of projection; but we think that most readers will find his vision in the end of the book, when he believes himself to be received back into a state of Grace, not quite satisfactory. This is, however, practically the only uncertain note struck in the book, in which otherwise Bob's primitive kind of mysticism is made part shocking, part pitiful, part triumphant, and altogether convincing. We congratulate Miss Kaye-Smith upon a very fine performance. She has been very ambitious ; has tackled some extremely intricate pieces of psychology ; has kept up her atmosphere completely ; has brought dock, daisy, and grass before us growing at their pleasure; and yet, with all this array of " high-brow " ingredients, she has not produced a work of art which is fit only for the taste of a litterateur, but has written a novel which is not only readable but absorbing.
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