SOME RECENT FICTION

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2994, 3 February 1917, Page 13

SOME RECENT FICTION

Mr. Locke at His Best. In "The Wonderful Year" (John Lane), Mr. William J. Locke is" at his yery best. A more amusing, wholesome" and generally entertaining novel it has not been my- pleasure to read this manya long day> His hero, Martin Openshaw, a youhj; -university man of AngloSwiss 'parentage, who, after a period of semi-slavery as French master in Margett's Private Academy, goes to France and becomes a waiter in : a Pcrigordian restaurant, may . suggest memories of our old friond', Septimus. Also, - the delightful Fortinbras, the disbarred English lawyer who lives in the Quartier Latin, and practises tho curious profession of a marchand do bonheur, acting as guide, counsellor, and TYiond to all who can produce the necessary fee of a five-franc piece, may be somewhat reminiscent of the immortal Paragot, in ' the "Beloved Vagabond." But his daughter, Feliso, -who has been adopted by the jovial Monsieur Bigourdin, restaurateur and manufacturer of pate do foie gra, Corinna, the "revolting daughter" of a country rectory, whom the ingenious Fortinbras dispatches on a very sentimental journey in company of the amiable naif Openshaw; Madame Clothilde, a typically, narrow-minded French devotee of the provinces, and quite a Balzacian these are fresh and eminently convincing creations. How the exschoolmaster at first fails to perceive the sterling quality of Felise's affection and wanders off to a strange goddess in Cairo —an American girl who is, by tho way, tho least convincing figure in the, story—how ho goes to the war ant] loses an a'rni,' and. then returns to Felise, rtrTd'felieity—no pun intended— in the snug little Hotel des Grottes in sunny and picturesque southern town';!.how lo marchand de bonheur solves his own life's problem; how Bigourdin—co brave Bigourdin!—finally cures, the restless Corinna of her feminist craze—all this and much more that is vastly entertaining you must find out for yourselves in tho. pages of Mr. Locke's diverting and eminentlv genial story. Mr. Locke has never been so fantastic in his imagination and yet so successful in garbing his puppets with seeming reality. As for the entrain, the general sprightliness and charm of the story, it is beyond all praise. Here is, again I say, Mr. Locke's very best. Mondel. •■•■.- Mr. Gilbert Cannan's latest novel. "Mendel" (T. Fisher Unwin) well maintains the already high reputation won by the author of "Round the Corner" and "Old Mole." ThV principal figure is a young Polish Jew, born and. bred amidst a sordid East End environment, but destined |.y a natural gift for art to become a painter of the first rank. Young Mendel becomes an : ardent Bohemian, and somo of. his friends and companions, both male and female, are strange, and to tell the .truth, somewhat unsavoury folk. Mr. Cannan's besetting sin has always been an almost morbid insistence upon sex, and such people as Logan, tho halfmad but brilliant Scots painter, and his Cockney girl mistress, are almost blatantly open sensualists, Mendel, however, though too, is dragged for a while fn the mire, rises to better things through sheer force of character and devotion to his artistic ideals, and we leave him at the end of the story with fair promise of attaining happiness, through his love for the pureminded Morrison. Perhaps the »trongest drawn and most likeable character in the story is the young artist's mother, Gerda, always faithful to her determination that the lad shall "have his chance," and pathetically watchful over his interests. "Mendel" is in many ways a strong and attractive piece of work. "The Lightning Conductress." by C. N. and A. M. Williamson (Mpthuen). An agreeable compound of motoring, romance, and skilfully dressed up topography. At this sort of thing tho Williamsons are without rivals, and they have never given their admirers a more gonerally entertaining novel than that in -which the love story of Miss Patricia Moore, daughter of an amiable but spendthrift father, and Pietro Stanislaus, ox-steerage passenger on tho s.s. Evangeline, chauffeur, and supposedly penniless adventurer, aro concerned. As a matter of fact the handsome. Pietro, who masquerades throughout tho story as Poter Storm, turns out to be an immensely wealthy young man, who, to save his brother's fair name, |ias allowed the' world first to consider' him guilty of a serious crime, and, second, to believe in his death. A rascally relative takes his place in tho worjd, and by a curious coincidence becomes his rival for tho affections of the fair Patricia. Needless to say that everything is put right in the final chapter. Apart from its love story—and a very pretty and pleasant love story it is—"Tho Lightning' Conductress" conveys a vast amount of information concerning many historic and picturesque parts of tho Now England States, and is a very readable and indeed fascinating romance of the present day. "Tho Potter's House," by Isabel C. Clarke (Hutchinson; per Wliitcombc and Tombs). Mrs. Clarke's story is concerned with the early days of the war. The heroine, Gillian Driscoll, discovers ftat her husband k unfaithful, and. worse, still, that one of her own personal friends-has shared his guilt. She divorces him and goes to Rome, eventually coming under the influorr- of tho Church, of which aha.,

becomes a convert. An old admirer, a pleasant young Englishman, for whom she has a great affection, ardently desires to marry hor, but she has by this time become convinced that for a divorced woman to remarry would bo a deadly sin. Her husband dies at tho front, and once freed sho duly rewards her patient and ever faithful Paul. Such is a brief outline of a story which contains some charming descriptions of Italian scenery and interesting pictures of life in Rome, and tho chief characters in which are exceptionally well drawn. "The General's Wife," by M. Hamilton (Stanley Paul and Co.), is a story of Anglo-Indian life. Tho middle-aged General IJruce, a widower, marries a young and selfish English girl, who, no sooner out in India, makes herself supremely ridiculous by her absurd airs and graces, and leads her husband a terrible life, indulging in an outrageously open flirtation with a silly young cavalry officer who is a nobleman. ' The General exhibits considerable patience, and eventually effects what most readers will fear must prove only a temporary cure. The story is a little thin, its chief attraction being the author's clever and sympathetic portraits of the General's children, two quite delightful youngsters, who certainly deserved.to have a more sensible step-mother.. . .