SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2462, 15 May 1915, Page 12

SOME RECENT FICTION.

ARNOLD BENNETT ON DIVORCE. Originally published in 1906, but now reprinted by Messrs. Mcthucn in a form similar to that of Mr. Arnold Bennett's more recent novels, "Tho Prioo of Love" is a story which, if it bo hardly up to the high standard of "The Old Wives' Tale" or "Olnyhanger," is nono the less well worthy of attention by tho novelist's admirors. Mr. Bennett was in earlier life a solicitor's clerk, and the acquaintance with the anomalies of the British divorce law which is displayed in this story, if not as "extensive and peculiar" as Mr. Samuel Wellor's knowledge of London and London life, at .least proves that the author has a very shrewd perception of tho ways ot lawyers and lawyers' offices. The scene is laid in the Five Towns which Mr. Bennett has made so famous, tho principal characters being a prosperous solicitor, a. model of respectability (o Lhe outside world, but iu private lifo an incorrig-

ibis sensualist, his wife and daughter, plus the solicitor's clerk and liis wife, in this case tho erring "party" ■ being tlie lady. Mr. Bennett sketches with masterly skill the progress of tho matrimonial misadventures of the two couples, and as usual, invests each and every figure in the book with an air of convincing realism. "The l'lice of Love" cannot bo described as a very pleasant story, and tho fact that it is loft to the solicitor's own daughter to discover and expose her father's immorality leaves a somewhat disagreeable impression on the reader. But tho description of the Court proceedings, though mercilessly realistic, could not have been bettered. A clever, if somewhat ugly, almost repellently ugly story in its plot, is "Tho Price of Love," ■ The most unsatisfactory feature of the book is its title.

"RAIN BEFORE SEVEN." • Eric Leadbetter's "Rain- Before Seven" (Allen and Unwin) I should say, a first novel. If so,'it is a work of considerable promise. The hero is a young musician, who fails to find favour with agents and managers, and after "going under" to the extent of being driven to unloading bananas at the docks, finally earns a living as pianist in a moving picture show. Bad luck seems to dog the lad even from his school' days, but "rain before seven" has its sequel in "fine before eleven," and by the. time the story closes tho erstwhile would-be rival of Paderewski finds a haven of relative comfort and rest in an electrical engineering enterprise, of which a. more matter of fact aud eminently more successful elder brother is the leading spirit. Mr. Leadbetter's pictures of, life at an English public school are assuredly not excessively complimentary to those muchdiscussed institutions. The difficulties before. a young professional musician are also skilfully suggested, and the part played in the hero's career in the sexual element is delicately yet strongly emphasised. "Rain Before Seven" is distinctly a novel i to be read.

"THE MYSTERY OF ENID BELLAIRS." Not so good, not nearly so good as that excellent story, "Tho Little Hour of Peter Wells," is Mr. David Whitelaw's latest novel, "The Mystery of Enid Bellairs" (Hodder and Stoughton), but still, in its own way, a very readable and enjoyable story. Tho heroine is a young lady, wliose father has gambled away his ancestral home aud fortune. Tho girl, goes on the stage and acts as under-study i to a popular actress. She gets lier chance at last, but recognising ill the audience "a scoundrelly fellow who has known her under her real name, has a sudden attack of stage fright, and breaks down very badly. Disgusted with tho stagej she hurries off the same night to France, all unaware that the actress whose part she has/played' lias been poisoned. In France, uncons6ious of the fact that she is being sought for as a murderess, she meets a young fellow of good family and marries him. Before the honeymoon is over the husband picks up a London paper and lea'rns that a warrant is out for the woman he lias married. He hurries his wife away to a shooting-box ho has in Scotland, the wife sorely perplexed at her husband's curious love of .isolation. To sot forth tho further working out of Mr. Whitelaw's clevor plot would be unfair to the author, who has contrived a peculiarly original and ingenious set of ontangleinents, all of which, however, are most satisfactorily cleared away in the last chapter. Just the .sort of story wherewith to.dispel the tedium of say, % Main Trunk journey.

"ROGER INCRAM." Artistic life in London bulks largely in "Roger Ingram," by Margaret Wejstrup (Methucn and Co.), and a literary element is also prominent. Tha hero, _ a somewhat egotistical and solfconsoious young author, marries a very pretty but uneducated girl, and lives to regret it. Poor Tibby cannot help her lack of aspirates, her openly expressed delight in certain savoury but unfashionable . articles of food, and, worst of all, the possession of a drunken and idle "Pa," a sort of first cousin to our old friend, Mr. Eccles, in "Castle." But her husband has not a, little of the prig in him, and on the whole tbo reader will sympathise just as much with the sadly bored Tibby as with the elegantly mannered but rather tiresome Roger, who, in the end, is left free to marry an old artist friend, through Tibby deciding s'lio cannot "stick it out any longer," and eloping with a faithful' admirer of her own class. The story Is too • wordy, but, like the curate's egg, is "good hi parts." "Pa" is quito a success, and the average reader will hail his appearance oil the scene with unfeigned delight.

"BEYOND THE SHADOW." Miss (or Mrs.?) Joan Sutherland's new story, "Beyond the Shadow" (Mills and Booii, per George Robertson and Co.) has hardly the compelling strength and interest of that fine novel "Cavauagli of, Kultann." Loss of memory is nowadays a well-worn cliche for a no"elist to employ, but Miss Sutherland puts it to new and ingenious c/fect when she makes her hero, a. popular actor-manager become, through an accident, so completely oblivious of tho fact that- he had loved and been loved by the charming Marian Desmond as to ttiarrv another woman. Upon this motif the author constructs an ingen ious and woll-ivritten story, to which alio has had the courage to'givc a completely artistic, if, to the sentimentallyinclined reader, 6omewhat unsatisfying conclusion. As in her earlier stories, the dialogue is refreshingly bright., and even the minor characters are strongly drawn and convincing.

"TIME 0' DAY." "Time o' Day," by D. Egerton Joneß (Cassell and Co.; per S. and W. Mackay), is _ a slight but amrsing story, the leading feminine characters in which belong to tho genus "flapper." The heroine, Miss Thyme O'Deas (a name facetiously interpreted by certain of her friends as "Time o' Day"), is also known in her own cirelo as' "Daytime" and "Timmy." She, like other characters in the story, is vcrv fond of kissing, and there is eiio'igh osculation iii the story to satisfy tile most exigeaute of lovers. Thyme's or Tinmiy's or Daytime's uwu opinion upon kissos is worth quoting; "A kiss is all the rich beauty of the world paokul into one intoxicating second; it is the dominant chord in the harmony of love: it is the prand heart-throb in t.lio pulse of lifo; it is poetry and music materialised." There now I This sort, of thing brings "Liber" back his long lost youth, when his sisters used to fight over tbo possession, of a utew story by Rhoda Hroughton, whoso "Wed as a Pose is She" and "Cometh up as a Flower" were the abiding joys of Victorian fiapperrloili. All the spiim. "Time o' Day" is a very amusing story, and there are many other interesting things in it. besides kissinj.

"YOUNC EARNEST." Coining as it does after those, strikingly original and clever stories, "Old Mole" and "Hound tho Corner," to say nothing of the yet earlier "Peter Homunculus," Mr. Gilbort Caunau's latest novel, "Yoiuig Earnest, the Romance of a Bad Start in Life" (G. 801 l and Sons, per Whitcombo and Tombs), is somewhat disappointing. In all his stories Mr. Caiman has shown himself nioro than a little obsessod by tho sexual factor in life. In his now story this clement is most disagreeably predominant Honestly, I lind his book not a little repellent. The hero, a young unmanly man, is a clover fellow, who wins scholarships, becomes a lecturer on economics, marries, and is apparently sottled down in life. After a while, however, ho finds his professional and domestic environment alike intolerable. Almost at a moment's notice, he deserts his position, wife, and homo, and goes up to London, where he lives in tho slums, gains his living as a taxi-cab driver, and contracts a temporary allianco with a pretty factory girl. Of her, too,'in timo, ho tires, and finally finds happiness—so Mr. Cannan would have us believe—with a young lady with whom he had been in love before his marriage to tho plump and pretty Linda, this third union, divorce being refused him, being contracted on the same irregular lines as tho sewnd. To somo extent Ernest Fourmy may havo been the victim of heredity, for Eourmy pere had been a Bohemian, and! as destitute of accepted' morality as the denizens of a poultry yard. Still, it is difficult to accept nim—as the author would clearly have us do—as an object of sympathy and liking. To me, ho is tainted by an inherent egotism, which at times, as in his parting from his pretty little slum mate, smacks of downright caddishness. Exactly .what is the moral of he story, if it is intended to moral of the story, it is diffioult to discover. One of Fourmy's friends consoles the hero with tho sage remark that "the marriage laws in England are so mixed up that perhaps it is more respectable, after all, not to get married." It seems to me, however, that Mr. Cannan's hero is almost as weak in his conception of common decency as he is'of the respectability at which his friend is pleased to gibe. He not only makes a bad start in life, but ends, apparently, of deliberation, and with the full sympathy of the author of his fictional being, even worse than he bofiins.

"COD'S COUNTRY AND A WOMAN." A year or so . ago Mr. James Oliver Curwood, the author of "God's' Country and a "Woman" (Cassells, per S. and W. Mackay) gave us a dog story entitled, "Kazan —tho Wolf Dog," which proved that Jack London had at last found a worthy rival as an exponent of wiiat might be called canine psychology. In his new story, Mr. Curwood again takes his readers to tho rim of the Arctic tircle, and introduces us to a heroine, a French Canadian, who has a bodyguard of forty dogs of the semi-wolf breed. Also, there, are some amazing scoundrels in the story. Indians, aud alas I too, white men, and the hero has to go through a series of almost Homeric fights before he finally wins his fair lady. A highly exciting story of adventure in the Beyond the' Beyond of northern Canada, and mighty good reading it makes for those who enjoy full-flavoured romance.

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