SOME RECENT FICTION

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2896, 7 October 1916, Page 13

SOME RECENT FICTION

Hearts and Faces. , Artist life in London and Paris lias been rather overworked as a motif in recent fiction, but the olever characterdrawing and the vividity of, the author's descriptions of certain scenes in Mr. J. Murray Gibbons's novel "Hearts and Faccs" (John Lane) mako the story well worth reading. Tho hero, Georgo Grange, is an Aberdonian by birth, and receives ..his earliest art training in tho Granite City, from a rugged old Scots "pontor," whoso frank and vigorous criticism of certain phases of latter-day art is delightfully fresh and In London tho hero wins his way to recognition, but just as lie is about to paint tho King's portrait—a commission, for a fashionable club—he becomes entangled, quito innocently, in a divorce case; and retreats to Paris. The author is evidently at homo'in his hero's now en-' vironinontj and his scenes of artist life in Paris and at Fontainebleau are picturesque and engaging. Tho scenes of the story take placo in London, the interest, hitherto largely sentimental, now becoming almost melodramatic through the prominence £iveii to the villain of the piece, a theatrical speculator who degenerates into a White Slave trafficker. Several ladies, artists' models for tho most part, play more or less prominent roles in the story,~but the hero is left in the last chapter almost as lonely a figure as wo find him in the beginning. Lovo has failed him, but. Art will be his consolation. Mr. Gibbons does not disguise or excuse the seamy sido of Bohemian artist lifo, ineithor Chelsea or Montmartre, but tho tone of tho story, save for one brief episode, is wholesome enough, and if only for its portraits of the old Scots painter, Reid, the eccentric young Frenchman . llapin— who might havo stepped straight out of the pages of "Trilby"—and tlio kind-ly-hearted old Parisian artist, Pourgeot, must bo adjudged a novel well above the average^

When a Man's a Man. "When a Man's a Man," by Harold 801 l Wright (Tho Book Supply Co., Chicago, per New Zoaland News Company, Wellington), is a very good specimon of tlie particular kind of fiction by which this author has won sufch ai widespread popularity. The scene is again tho Wild '■ West, Arizona, in tho days when tho once unl'oncod cattle lands wore beginning to bo subdivided. Tho hero is a young mil r lionairo from an Eastern city, who, tiring of tho banality and uselessness of his existence, determines to strike out iu an entirely new line, and boconies, undor an assumed name, at first a handy-man, and, in time, a finished product of the cowboy type on a big cattlo ranch. How Lawrence Knight, masquerading under the oddly sounding name of Honourable Patches, j makes a bosom friend in tho overseer, I Phil Acton, a finfe, breezy, unconventional young Westerner; how ho rescues bis friend from death, first at tho horns of a mad bull, and, later, at tho hands of a scoundrolly cattdo thief; how, too, tho stranger comos between Phil and his lovo, and is for a timo suspected of being himself in league' with tho "bad men" of the district; all this and much more which is productive of a fine dramatic interest is sot forth by Mr. Wright in his usual vigorous stylo. In tho end the.hero, by an act of fine Bolf-abnegation, makos both Phil and his Kate very happy, and disappears whence ho came, over tho sky-lino of the hills overlooking tho' great cattlo • ranges, a mail who had proved himself a man in tho 'very best sense of tho term. Tho author gives us a detailed description of the cattlo breeding industry of tho West, and of tho changes now being wrought (therein b% tho subdivision

and fencing of tho ranches. "A\lian a Man's a Man" is certainly a vigorously written, essentially wholesome, and most entertaining story. An attractive feature of the book is the scries of delicately drawn "illustrations and decorations —head and tailpieces to the various chapters—which aro contributed by tho author. Mr. Wright can draw almost as well as ho can write. The Creen Orchard. >, In "The Green-Orchard," by Andrew Sou tar (Cassell and Co.; per S. and W. Maekay) we are introduced to Mr. Martin Wesley Wilderspin, a young lawyer, . given to drinking, still further fails to live up to the second of his names, when lie runs off to Paris and marries, after a few hours' acquaintance, tho pretty, but unconventional, Fauvctte, who is a lady journalist of decidedly Bohemian tastes and habits. ' Transported to tho little English country town of Mogborne. she finds herself in a, very unsympathetic atmosphere. Also, after a timo, her husband starts tippling again and neglects her. Next, a friend of Martins's, Tony, from California, turns up and visibly impresses Fauvotte. Martin manufactures, for divorce purposes, a sham intrigue, but the little Frenchwoman goes off to Paris, and becomes world famous as a novelist. In the end, although imagining herself free, she refuses to marry Tony, and meets her husband in London. Ho, by this time, reformed and duly repentant, mates love to her afresh, and a happy reunion follows. A very fresh and readable story.