NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21418, 9 March 1935, Page 17

NEW NOVELS

A GONCOURT PRIZE NOVEL The Wolves. By Guy Mazcline. Lovat Dickson. 775 pp. (.10/6 net.) It is not hard to understand that this novel won the Goncourt Prize, but it is hard to understand why 136 French editions have been sold. The .prize was awarded for the book's scope and completeness, for skill in depicting a multitude of characters, and for that most important quality of a novel —inevitable, lifelike development. Neither subject nor treatment is such as usually achieves popularity. The subject is the disintegration of a family left leaderless and with the bad example of an idle, wealthy, pretentious father. The treatment is never sensational, rarely spirited; few novels of such length have contained so little excitement of event. Background is to be inferred and there is very little humour. Lack of obvious attractions has not harmed this study of domestic manners. While M. Mazeline's most unusual success has been to introduce a horde of personages who at once become memorable and never confusing, his real achievement has been to represent acutely and with conviction the effect upon half a dozen characters of the same disturbing occurrence.

The inheritor of great wealth and reputation founded a family of two daughters and three sons. The father became a miserable flaneur cherishing insistently a family pride which he did nothing to maintain, demanding a deference he had no right to exact, and arrogantly dissipating the wealth entrusted to him. His wife, of peasant birth, was foolishly possessive and timidly proud, afraid to assume at home and abroad the respect that she pitifully desired. The foolish father was the prey of the intense and selfish love of his aged mother, who had made him ineffectual, and would ruin him to continue his subservience. In the five children the operations of heredity are remarkably visible. Maximilian Jobourg, the unhappy father, is no Oblomov; better for him if he were. There comes into his life a young woman, his illegitimate daughter, fruit of his one moment of passionate independence and manhood. Through this young woman he tries to regain the certainty and strength lie had felt when he knew her mother. His own ineptitude, the enmity of his despised townsmen, the selfish ambition of his children—these influences cause his dissolution, a process which becomes faster as self-control is lost. In representing this process with every circumstance of truth and illustration, M. Mazeline has added one more to that splendid number of French novels of domestic manners which includes "Eugenie Grandet," "Madame Bovary," and, in our own time, "Homines de Bonne Volonte." A ( I .MBitIAN TALH Latter Howe. By Doreen Wallace. Wm. Collins Sons and Co. Ltd. 234 pp. This is a pleasantly-told tale of a young Cumbrian farmer who marries a university don, of their reactions to each other and to the wife's many relations, and of their simple attachment because of the interests that they hold in common. The wife's ill-health casts a shadow between them that is never lifted till her death. For the farmer's is the more sensitive, imaginative mind, hers more practical. When she becomes afflicted with tuberculosis it is he whose mental suffering is the greater because lie feels the loss of the contact of spirit that has been their principal bond. The author plays subtly on effects of emotional disturbance upon the temperament of this young and imaginative man. CANADA IN THE EAItLIES The Flying Years. By Frederick Nivcn. Wm. Collins Sons and Co. Ltd. 284 pp.

J The quality of Mr Niven's work is maintained in this new story. In brief, it is the story of a young Scot, who, driven out from the Highlands, emigrates to Canada with his father and mother. With his mind ever harking back to his native hills he nevertheless finds in the great new country adventure for mind and body. From an Indian wife he learns to appreciate the qualities of the North American natives and his interest in them survives through a life devoted to their service. The story is told against the background of changing and progressive years in which Canada emerges from a place of primitive settlements to a country of great cities and tremendous industrial and agricultural activity. The characters are finely drawn and the author's sound literary instinct makes the tale run smoothly, gently etching his chief character against the wide horizon of the period. KRCSTKATION Ihe Trial of Linda Stuart. T'.y iWavy liiekcl. Hamisli Hamilton Lid. ::o2 pp. The author has chosen an unusual vehicle to convey her story. Linda Stuarf, a beautiful woman, is on trial in a small American town lor Ibe murder of her fiance. Her examination and cross-examination are recorded as though in a newspaper report and in alternate chapters the background of the woman's life is skilfully drawn. So we find that the fiance, to all appearances a man of worth, is really deranged on the subject of women's capacity for honourable dealing. Linda Stuart, at first loving him whole-heartedly, becomes engaged to him, but finds that though he is willing to keep her enslaved by his jealousy, he is not willing to marry her. Her pride prevents her from dispelling the assumption that it is she who is not ready to marry and so the years drag on in an endless engagement embittered by the mental cruelties that her fiance inflicts upon her. The strongest evidence of her guilt is the fact that the fiance has willed his property to her and there are other circumstances that strengthen the case against her, including letters from another man who has in the meantime fallen in love with her. Interest is dramatically maintained by the style in which the story is told, and its climax is well staged.