Untitled Book Review

WE have asked Marshall Best, a seasoned hand with fiction, to appraise a new prize novel and three others that will compete against it for autumn popularity.

Two books in this group of four very readable novels bring home the importance of an author’s stopping before he says too much. If Brothers in the West ($2.50), the new Harper Prize novel by Robert Raynolds, had ended fifteen pages earlier, it could be bailed without reservation as an admirable story. For up to that point, where it comes to a natural end, it is a full-blooded tale of adventure, a work of imagination enriched by lively observation. The brothers are two giants of the Western plains and mountains, twin Paul Runyans having no beginning in time or space, who roam the land tossing off vigorous deeds along the way. Their lives are big with the spaces in which they move; and from their devotion to each other they draw a vitality which helps them to take all obstacles in their stride. They marry and rear children, always on the march; their caravan gathers up new followers until it becomes a sort of circus of Spanish beauties, Mexican peasants, outcasts, madmen, cow-punchers, and pioneer couples. After years of wandering, they find an almost fabulous home site in a vast plateau ringed with mountains, and there they build their demesne.

This legendary outline is filled brimful with actualities. The lesser characters are normal human beings living the life of the West in the early days; the events and emotions are concrete, the descriptions vivid and real. Only the brothers remain on the border line of reality, speaking and acting in a fashion of their own, heightened to a superhuman scale. Their story may be accepted with that ‘absence of disbelief accorded to legend — enjoyed for the zest with which it is written and the lavish splendor of its setting. All this, at any rate, up to the last fifteen pages, which are infinitely more disappointing than a mere bad ending to a good book. Their sentimentality suddenly makes it clear that the author’s exaggerations and overtones were meant in all seriousness, and in the light of this knowledge the book becomes only an old-fashioned Western melodrama tricked out with fine writing and unconventional characters.

In Death of a Hero,Richard Aldington gave vent to his bitterness about the type of mind that made the War. Now he carries his criticism forward in The Colonel’s Daughter (Doubleday, Doran, $2.50), a keen and clear-headed satire of the British mind to-day. Its laugh is chiefly at the expense of the smug smalltown gentility, the patriots and ‘Empire-Builders,’reactionaries both political and social; but its openarmed malice embraces likewise the petty tradesmen, the village working class, colonials, capitalists, æsthetes, and gilded youth — the habitual mockers as well as the habitually mocked. Georgina’s father is a retired army officer whose life is contained in cricket scores, horses, and barrack-room reminiscences. His wife is a colorless domestic prude. True to this pattern, and poor besides, the homely daughter faces life in an England where there are seven women to every man. At twenty-six, her sixteen-year-old mind is still a slave to her parents’ tastes and standards, as her person is to their daily whims.

Georgie is only the index to a whole hierarchy of blunderers and bigots. Often they are no more than caricatured, and many of their fatuities have been satirized before — but never so well collectively, and never so thoroughly or with such animation. The author leaves them no virtues — or rather leaves nothing to admire in their too obvious ones—and poor Georgie suffers with the rest. Yet he somehow contrives to let us like her and pity her fate.

In this perfect satire of points of view it is needless to read anything deeper than a criticism of the mental traits which have made life what it is for this group today. Tins is a good and sufficient reason for a brilliant book. Unnfortunately Mr. Aldington felt impelled to go a step further. His epilogue attempts to interpret the story, and explain the meaning of his depressing picture. A more deflating pinprick for the gusto of his satire, and a more futile begging of the question, could hardly have been devised.

For light entertainment, nothing better need be asked than The Shortest Sight, by G. B. Stern (Knopf, $2,50), which adds to the small number of good mystery stories by authors already expert as ’straight’ novelists.

A villa on the Riviera shelters an amiable crew of young bohemians on holiday from London’s intensities. They talk their brisk and whimsical jargon and live their erratic lives; and the tragedy that occurs one night of mistral only adds flavor to their visit. The interest is tirst. in the characters and dialogue, secondarily in the plot; yet the mystery itself is adroitly unfolded. The ending has the right touch of extravaganza to laugh the whole story off and to sidetrack any lingering skepticism.

Sheila Kaye-Smith has written many novels, but her latest, Susan Spray (Harpers, $2.50), is sufficient evidence of her qualities as a novelist. Few books of such solid substance, such skill and charm and deep ironic undertones, are appearing in these times. With a fullness of portraiture which reckons with the hidden traits as well as the more apparent ones, it unfolds the character of a woman whose life was moulded to success by her power of self-deception. From a wretched childhood, steeped in the words of Scripture, Susan dreamed of Ezekiel’s Temple and the waters of life that issued from under its threshold. As a girl scaring rooks in a Sussex cornfield, and seared herself by an approaching storm, she made herself believe that she saw the Lord in a thundercloud. The simple elders accepted tier excuse for running away, and credited her with the gift of tongues. She became their preacher and planned to escape ‘the common lot of women.’ Gradually her calling became a means to an end, a satisfaction for her craving for power, which fed on its own success. Through a long series of triumphs and compromises, her ambition is at last fulfilled. Ezekiel’s Temple is established on earth, with herself as master, a wealthy husband to provide for her worldly needs, and a band of the faithful to attend her. Each step of her life is prompter! by ambition or vanity, yet she never suspects herself of insincerity; it is always the Gall. Susan Spray is a novel of the older school in its methodical development and careful characterization.