SOMS RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2498, 26 June 1915, Page 9

SOMS RECENT FICTION.

"BRUNEL'S TOWER." Discerning readers have long held that Mr. Eden Philpotts is in the very front rank of present-day English novelists ; indeed, there are some who would placo him almost on a level -with Thomas Hardy himself. In his latest story, "Brunei's Tower" (William Heinemann; per George Robertson and Co.), Mr. Philpotts is quite at his best. The two principal characters are a runaway lad, a strange compound of good and evil, coldly selfish, treacherous on occasion, but possessing deep down in his strange mental make-up a strain of fierce loyalty to his benefactor; and the man, a West Country potter, a man of uncompromising integrity and sternest conception of personal honour who tirst befriends tho lad and then turns lnm adrift, only, after a time, to find his heart softening to the wastrel, who eventually saves bis old master's life at the cost of Ms own. Primarily, "Brunei's Tower" is a study in psychology. Incidentally it is a series of pictures 'of a phase of life quite unknown to New Zealand, and for that matter, to most Old Country readers._ Mr. Philpotts's working potters are just as delightful character studies as were the fishermen, and peasants, of his earlier stories, and this particular novel is notable also for the penetrating and convincing studies of feminine human nature. Tho moral j of the story is that which no man nor Woman is to bo accounted without blemish he or she may play a useful role in life. As the old potter expresses it on the closing page: "Men are like pets, Sam—none perfect, if you look close enough, for perfection is deniod all made on earth. But millions of men and pots are perfect enough to fulfil their purpose and do fine work, and be beautiful, or useful, or both. Our blemishes need not spoil us, and though, speaking as a Christian, we're all damaged goods, by the nature of things; yet none is worthless, and a faulty piece may often be lifted to a very nobie purpose." "THE SWORD OF YOUTH." It is a good many years ago now since Mr. James Lane Allen, the author of "The Sword of Youth" (Macmillan and Co.) charmed, not only his own countrymen, but so manv thousands of English readers with tiiose delightful books, "The Choir Invisible," and "The Kentucky Cardinal." In his new story, Mr. Allen displays all his old charm of graceful literary style. The story is that of a young man, his mother's only son, who suddenly feels that he must answer the call of duty and enlist in the Confederate Army. Joe Summers not only leaves a mother —a mother who had already lost, and lost forever, in this world, a husband and two sturdy sons—but his sweetheart. Poor Joe is only seventeen and the struggle between jove and what his conscience tells him is his duty is terribly severe. But to tho war he goes and does his duty well, even nobly. There comes a day when news reaches him in a letter from his sweetheart, that his mother is sick unto death, and that only 'his presence can save her. The letter, I may say, is one of the most simply beautiful and patnatic. things I have ever read. Joe deserts, only to find, on reaching the homestead, that his mother is dead. Back to the war he goes, and is tried for desertion. How ho is saved from death, or even official dishonour, it would bo unfair to an author to say. Warmly, very wnrmlv, do I commend the beautiful and touching story to my readers. It breathes throughout a spirit of fine humanity, love, courage, and self-sacrifice. Here we get, not the pomp and glory of war, but its purely human side, its nobler j>ida. By all means read i-'Xha Stohl

of Youth." Soenes, actors, are, it is true, American, but human nature and love are tho 6ame all the world oyer, and always good and wliolcsomo things to read about. "THE TEMPLE OF DAWN." Tho author of that succossful novel, "The Eajah's People," returns to India for tho chief scenes in Lor highly dramatic story, "The Temple of tho Dawn" (Mills and Boon, per George Robertson and Co.). Miss Wylie's admirers certainly cannot complain of any lack of excitement in her latest effort. Tho hero is a young English officer who achieves fame by an act of supreme bravery at a frontier fort, but afterwards, being accused of murdering his wife's rich father, disappears, and is wrongly believed to have been killed in a railway accident. Tho widow, who has believed her husband guilty, marries another officer, who has earlier in his career seduced the sister of an Indian prince. The revenge which the latter would fain take is thwarted by the first husband, who, disguised as an Indian holy man, has a mysterious influence over the natives. Jn the long run the hero's innocence is proved by a woman's confession. Husband No. 2 and the revengeful Rajah both fall in deadly conflict, and then—explanations, reconciliation, and, I presume, unalloyed happiness for a much-tried pair. Miss Wylie gees very near to spoiling her story by introducing certain purely Western problems, such as the sweating system, but taken as a whole) "Tho Temple of the Dawn" is well worth reading. "TIPPERARY TOMMY." 'As you may well be pardoned for guessing, Mr. Joseph Keating's latest novel, "Tipperary Tommy" (Methuen and Co.), is a story of the present war. The here, Geoffrey Canavan, Irish by b]ood, a West Country Englishman by long residence, is a dashing young fellow, whose recklessness has won him so evil a reputation that an open marriage with the girl he loves would spell the sacrifice of her fortune. The outbreak of war sees the hero defying fate, secretly marrying his love, the bridegroom marching almost straight away from a little country church and its atmosphere of ancient peace into tho blood-stained arena at Mons. His wife of a day soon follows her husband, and —well the rest of the story you shall read for yourselves in the pages of Mr. Keating's exciting but well-told tale. I am not altogether sure whether it is not yet a trifle too early to read stories of this sort, but there are fewer absurdities in Mr. Keating's yarn than have been expected, and as a military romance, all of the present time, it has considerable merit.

"THE FAMILY." After the highly dramatic "Lu of the Ranges," and the almost farcical comedy of "Simpson," Mr. Elinor Mordaunt's latest novel, "The Family" (Methuen and Co.), comes somewhat as a surprise, for in subject and style the author seems to have strayed for a while into entirely new paths. "The Family," indeed, reminds me not a little of Mr. Gilbert Connan's "Hound the Corner." It is the history of the Hebbertons, Squire Hobberton, his wife, and their eleven children —race suicide was not popular in England in the Victorian 'seventies. A more shiftless, helpless, though quite troll-meaning couple than Mr. and Mrs. Hebbcrton could not well be imagined, and the decadence of the family, as a family, was inevitable. There are strong as well as weak Hebbertons, but the weak predominate, and honestly, this story of their misfortunes hardly makes pleasant reading, so uniformly grey is the atmosphere. Here and there Mrs. Mordaunt shows a fine .yqmmand of ironic..humour, as, in .her portrait of- a fish-blooded, ...egotistical, and pompous vicar, but on the whole I find "The Family" a somewhat depressing production. •

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