SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 44, 16 November 1918, Page 11

SOME RECENT FICTION.

"Earthware."- / . ■ ■ Miss Lindsay Kuswll's latest book, "Earthware" (Ca'sscll and Co.,' per S. f and W. Maekay), marks, a. distinct advance iii. the. quality off this-now., weil.practised novelist's' work. \ In .'.earlier, .novels Miss Biissoll .has dealt, mainly with Australian, life.:.. -in. "Earthware". the background is first, a village in the Highlands, the scene.then changing, to Paisley, and, later on, to London. The ■principal*■ figure, Eltfynr Hankie,.is .the daughter of a wastrel but lovable Irish •father and a grimly Puritanical Highland woman. Possessed-of a highly .emotional temperament, ■ a dreamer of dreams, Eltrym, as she grows into womanhood', begins lo -find the-harsh, crude, life of Bald Gourie almost unbearable. She marries a• jjoung. Glasgow- schoolmaster, Sandy M.\lvinnon', a well-inten- . tioned 'mail, ''but a dreadful prig, and after .bearing* her husband a ehild.'who dies in infancy,' finds life in the cold Cnlvinislic household' of her father-in-law so intolerable that she'runs away to London, bearing with 'her the manuscript of a book of poems, by which she. hopes to win' literary fame. How she finds for a. time rest and happiness,' but why and how, in the long run, she returns to her husband I must not tell indetail. Tho heroine is a very charming and lovable. creature, but the strong point of the story lies in its character studies of the' older people," especially the strangely ill-mated parents'of Bald Cowrie, and'the grim old woman; Sandy's aunt Christina, who so completely fails to understand poor Eltrym's nature.

"Eyes of Eternity." There is a strong Ouida-ish flavour about Miss E; iivorett' Green's ■ latest novel, : "Eyes of Eternity"'(Stanley Paul and Co.), in which' we are' given yet "mother' variant of the ancient mid not verv pleasant motif of a silly, selfish, and" f-omewhat sensual woman endeavouring, happily in vain, to rob her daughter of a lover, who, as a young man, had certain sentimental passages with the mother. Vera, Lady Vale, is a figure who recalls mid-Victorian fiction of the "Family Herald" and "London Journal" type, o'nd other leading characters in history are painfully stagey. The tropical background of the story, however, is picturesquo and interesting, and, on tha whole, the romantic attachment of the handsome Boris and tho pretty . and naive Barbara is delicately and c'onviiKingly treated.