NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19150, 5 November 1927, Page 17

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

POLYNESIA. Mystic Islea of the South Sets. By Frederick O'Brien. Hodder and Stoughton. Thi3 is a vivid picture of life in the South Seas written by an American with an Irish name and the imagination of both races. Mr O'Brien can be very amusing, but he can also be very sentimental, and it is not certain that he is ever the completely faithful geographer and historian. Ho does, however, give us our money's worth, heaped up and running over, and porhaps in the end leaves as clear a picture of present-day Polynesia as can be conveyed to anyone who has not actually lived there. And if he has been called a sentimentalist, that is not because he prettifies the islands or their white, yellow, or brown inhabitants. People who think of the South Seas as "isles of the blest" will not find Mr O'Brien pleasant reading, and may .oven, like tho woman of Tuatini who left her husband because he had "adopted the white convention of jealousy and monogamy," prefer darkness to light. But those are not the people for whom this book is intended. Neither are literary people, although Mr O'Brien met and talked and walked and swam with Rupert Brooke, and got the history, almost at first hand, and certainly on the spot, of Pierre Loti and Gauguin. He is purely a journalist, and be writes as one, but he is not exactly a "family circle" journalist, and this is distinctly riot tho boo!;, to select for a Sunday School prize. (Through W. S. Smart, Sydney.)

MR BRADLEY AND GOD. The Natural State. By U. Dennia Bradley. T. Werner Laurie, ltd. Thoso who find a difficulty in ploughing their way through this book should turn back to the wrapper and study it carefully. They will find, to begin with, that Mr Bradley is the author already of five other books which have run from their tenth to their sixtieth thousand; that he was born just like other people, though "educated by God and self" (the "s" is small), and that his favourite occupations (after tennis and horse-racing) are "dancing in harmony with good-humoured ladies and indulging in satiric banter with dull-witted gentlemen." It will then perhaps dawn on them that it is wit to say that G. B. Shaw finds sex a dull subject for reasons related to the fact that he is not a father, and humour to depict Lloyd George as a gross, stupid, hairy Horatio Boftomley who rallies morally grandiloquent speeches in public and "broadly confidential" ones to pretty women as often as he gets a chance. There will still remain the problem of the turgid introduction —222 pages to a play 128 pages long—but the dull-witted _ must' not try tp set the pace for genius.

LOVE ANP GOLD, lover's Staff. By Siholl Vanpittart. George Allen and TJnwln. This is a well-constructed novel, in spite of the fact that its theme is not one but two "marriages of convenience." Lady Helen loved her cousin Lord Delamotte, but her parents forced her to marry John Bowring,. a wealthy man who began his career as a millhand, and even her granddaughter, Nancy Bowring, who resembled her in many ways, helped to pay the price. Sir John Bowring was sin autocrat, and feeling that Nancy wasnqt of his blood, took every opportunity to hu- , miliate her, so that in the end she too was forced into a loveless marriage. However, her husband was a gentleman, not a millhand, so her venture turned out differently. The description of 'the reactions of the' various characters to thejr circuinstances, ancl especially of the two returned 'officers is above- the average in hooks of this type.

A SERMON. God and the Groceryman. By Haipld Bell Wright. Appleton and Company. The Christian, churches in America are getting rather knocked abput by the novelists. Sinclair, Lewis' raised a storm with "Elmer Gantry," which was a vitriolio attack on a certain type of clergyman, and now Harold l Bell Wright, in his own peculiar way, has alsq opened fire. His ncvel is a direct appeal to Americans to allow Christian ideals tq dominate: both their private and business lives! He quotes freely from statistics in, support of his remarks tjiaj* the prespnfc cqndiiion of sqciety iii the States is not what it ought to, be, and p|eads for a return to a simpler and more religious mode qf life. The book is of cpurse a sermon, thinly disguised as a novel. The chief characters are' a typical American family as they are usually presented to us, and although the groceryman is a good fellow, Mr Wright's insistence qn his occupation is wearisome and exaggerated. "' (Through Whitcoinbe and Tombs.)

«€OME O'ER THE STREAM, CHARLIE!." Madam Madcap. By Coutta Brisbane. The Bodley Head. Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion has been a godsend to novelists for 150 years, but tjus author has broken away from the usual pursuit of the Pretendr er's followers, and tells an entertainr ing tale abput a colonial gentleman from Jamaica who falls foui of spme soldiers who are out hunting refugees, and is compelled to hide with a masked woman qnd her gipsy followers. There is a slight counterplot of a youpg aristocrat who. is held for an unusual ransom, but the love interest is quite subordinatpcj to the movement of the plot. The author has gone tq great lengths to make his background as picturesque and convincing as possible.