SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1978, 7 February 1914, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION.

SONS AND LOVERS. Mr. D. H. Lawrence, in his "Sons and Lovers" (Duckworth: per' George Robertson's) ,goes one better than ©yea Mr. Arnold Bennett in the meticulous detail of his pictures of life in tvho Black Country of ihp Midlands.' His ■ story is practically the; life history of a family, the : '-Morels, .tho husband a rouph, -uncultivated collier., brutal when in nis crips, but not a bad fellow at heart;. the wife a. '.woman of much superior birth and e'dnoatioii. Gradually' all love for her husband becomes extinguished, and Mrs. Morel lives for her children, especially' for her boys, Of these ono succeeds for a time, but goes to London, becomes. engaged-to 3 worthless, silly girl, and • dies. The second,. Paul, is the fsa'l hero of the-1 history,, and. of his curiously', complex j ■character' the. author gives us a most I detailed—almost too detailed—picture, Paul is : of a strongly artistic temperament, and ambitious.' Mo has sfl'ntnwsatal relations with two wosr.i?n,_ but the mother's love for ar4.prid.c-in hiro is_ accompanied' by. a. burning jealousy of all other feminine influences and' Paul tooalthough capriciously subject to" sexual ■ influences, refrains from marrying the one, and has not tho-da-ring.or perbans desire to'persist in his liaison with the other.. Finnlly, thekng-sufc-ing mother is -attacked by cancer, arid her passionate' attachment to her son teenies almost a mania. Sha. lingers on for months,.- and as t!w>. storv; closes, ' her death «t last \\vtn Paul free .to dispose of his life. What that new lifo is to bo is not disclosed, but ■ pcrifcrps in a seouel somo' erili'Ehteiifiumfc may come?. The £rini, 'relentless realism of the story, is. almost conipletelv without the belief of humour, and,, there- is a touch of something like cruelty in it ..which one dnos not find in, say, Mr. -Bennett's "Clayhanopr," with which, 'however, it would perhaps be unfair_to compare Mr. novel'., which deals, for the most part, with a lower r/rade of lif" tlim does <lmt fammis story of. tho Five Towns. In more tfcnn one chapter Mr. Lawrence has displayed a certain lack of reticence, which, by some readers, may-be considered a lapse from good taste, but his excuse l is no doubt a desire to be faithful to reft! life. And. real, life, in a Midlands colliery district, is sometimes very ugly, "THE POISON BELT." Sir Arthur Conaa Doyle would dc well to kill off his new hero, Professor Challenger, and bury him deep enough to prevent his. reappearance, for after Sherlock Holmes ho is but' a woodeny puppet,' and, truth to tell, a mishtily unpleasant one. "Tho Lost World," in which the professor first appeared, struck me as being a laboured and very

dull story, and "Tiio Poison. BHi" (Hoddcr and Slough ton, pr S nnd T A\ Mack-ay) is an oven weaker production. The uncouth and'ill-tempered, but disgustingly egotistical man of science predicts a terrible catastrophe to tho world offing to our sphere passing through an unknown zone of other which possesses a poisonous influence. Down at his country •'homo in Surrey tho professor pud his guests, his comrades in "The Lost World" advfcuture, battlo against tic poison by tho aid of oxygen, but out- : side the cottage there is universal death —or supposed death—for ciitbo tho earth gets through the Poison Belt the myriads of;seemingly inanimate creatures suddenly come to life again—all unconscious that tlwy have been. in something akin to a trance. Thgjitory is uot' ill-told, but Mr. H. G. AVolls can do this sort of thing far better than Sir Arthur; Conau Dovte.. BLAOK SiLENDE. . Sirs. Marie Connor Le.ight.oii, tho author of "Blade Sileuco" (Ward, Lock, and Co.; per S. and W. Mackay), is,'l belifivs, a, clever 'ladv journalist,- but as a novelist it would be sheer. flattery to give her even fifth-rate rank. As tho basis for a kinematagraph play of •tho strenuously " melodramatic type, "Black Silence" might pass muster, but nowadays the sort of fiction' which._ is represented by the following quotation is qt'jte impossible: , A flush crept into tho almost colourless cheeks of the bauker-peer. • Ha caught her wrist, and, drawing ■ her so close that he could whisper into hc-.r ear, answered bar- quickly and uieaiiiugiy, . . '("Marry mo secretly, aiid I will ! do a great deal for innj, T will spend -money broadcast in employing, private detectives. ... .1 will spare nothing.- I will'forget that your father has wronged mo , . . if .you will -pay mo in advance by giving me yourself. "Tho girl. drew back' suddenly then,. as_if a serpent -had stirag--her. _ 'Not so soon, not so soon,' she faltered j brokenly. . . Prove that ho did not take that, million pounds' yorth of bonds from the bank, and I will" bless you." And then the banker-peer,- who is, of course, a terrible scoundrel, promises everything to his "beautiful -Lucine," the while "his fingers were playing with the loose tendrils nf hair that strayed about her temples," And so on., and so on. Realty, I thought ibis sort of thing had gone out with tho Bland linltian type of melodrama and the "Bow Bolls" novelettes. "THE IRRESISTIBLE INTRUPER." If only for Publius. afie of the most h'uftan s and delightful boys who have inado their appearance in receiit fiction, Mr. William Caine's pretty and'amusing story, "The Irresistible Intruder" (Ion 1 - don: John-Lane). would bo worth reading. Puhlius is—well simply "mimense"—forgive the Victorian vuleprisml He fairly brims over with ' live, I and realty dominates the storr, iu which tlie leading motif is, nominally at-'teast, the love of a very agreeable, well-to-do, and good-natured bachelor for a very pretty \itilo widow, whose life, up to her appearance at Wispers, had been somewhat pathetic. Tlie pretty widow plays, it is true, rather a mean trick-unon the eligible bachelor, but after all. lier repentance- ■is'-girauiiie, and, all things con* siderod, I cannot blame the.synod fellow l-.is forgiveness of llev. -He will never, I think, regret- the day when; the reresourceful Pijblius so conveniently olays the dens ex machina and "yanks" the fleeing lady out of a railway carriage to \"make it up" with "TJne-lo Bill.'