SOME RECENT FICTION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2675, 22 January 1916, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION

"ME." "Me: A Book of Remembrance" (Fisher Unwin) is by an anonymous writer. Tbis novel has been greatly praised by a popular American lady novelist, and the story goes that the publisher's "reader," who perused it in manuscript, sat up to some unearthly hour in order to finish it, so intense was its fascination for the hardened critic who acted as "taster." "Me" is a very readable story, in autobiographical form, of a young Canadian lady's extremely varied experiences and adventures in the West Indies, and later on in Chicago, where she acts as typiste in'the office of one of the great meat packing companies. Her love affairs «iro almost bewildering in number and variety She is engaged to three men at once, and yet allows a handsome, elderly and wealthy man to furnish and pay the rent of her expensive rooms, and to buy her costly furs, without being in the least conscious she is acting so unwisely as to justify the suspicious comments of her girl friends. She is no ordinary girl, for she writes wonderful short stories, which are simply rushed by magazine editors, and yet. there is nothing ill her recorded conversation to lead the reader of her autobiography to eccept her as r, literary genius. She does the most risque things with an air of innocence, hut when on the point of becoming the mistress of her wealthy benefactor she discovers ho is n married _mtuu hoc. virtue suddenly stifEans,. p-ncL

she flees to New York, presumably to adopt a professional literary career.. The Chicago lodgitighouse scenes are very brightly described aud tho story is lively enough all through,- which is scarcely surprising, for a heroine who has, apparently within a week or two, proposals of marriago from a divorced gentleman of forty-five; from tho same man's son, a youth- of 20; from an insurance agent; an Irish _ politician; from "two clerks in our office who were willing to 'take chances' on me"; from a plumber (who proposed because she made him a cup of tea when he came to mend the kitchen sink); from a Japanese tea merchant; a poet; and a Chicago editor; could hardly fail to have something interesting to say on life as she found it. Nevertheless I am afraid "Me" would, never keep me'up very late.

A CANADIAN STORY. The Canadian prize novel in Hodder and Stoughton's All-British £1000 Prize Novel Competition is "The Land of the Scarlet Leaf," by Mrs. A. E. Taylor •(Hodder and Stoughton; per S. and W. Mackay). The interest of the_ story centres round the husband-hunting adventures of a young English girl, who goes but to Canada as companion to a middle-aged Canadian widow. Delia is: hardly a pleasing heroine, for she is selfish and unprincipled, and behaves very badly to the man sho really loves, but whom she rejects for a wealthier suitor. The story, however, is well told, a humorous interest being provided by certain imported English servants of an extremely, almost extravagantly, insular type. AN AUSTRALIAN STORY. Mrs. Campbell Praed has been writing novels for a good many years now, but her hand shows little sign of losing its cunning. She can always be depended upon for a- well-planned plot, and an agreeably-told story. Her latest novel, "Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land r ' (Hutchenson); per Whitcombe and Tombs), has for heroine an English lady, of good • family, who, tiring of conventionality, goes to Australia in search of a simpler and more satisfying life. In the Queensland back-blocks she meets, loves, and marries a. fine fellow, a typical Australian. The marriage is not, however, one of unbroken happiness, for there is, for a time, a conflict between the bride's inherited affection for the traditions and customs of old-world society and the unfettered outlook and ideals of the new-civilisation, as represented in the husband. Love, however, is triumphant in the long run. As in her previous stories of Australian life, Mrs. Campbell Praed is highly successful in reproducing the Australian local colour. . Reviews of several other novels are held over.