PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 134, 3 December 1938, Page 27

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

The City Librarian has chosen "The Buccaneers," by Edith Wharton, as the, book of the week, and has furnished the following review:—

Mr. Gaillard Lapsley. Mrs. Wharton's literary executor, contributes notes forming tne preface and the postscript of the story, and has also included Mrs. Wharton's own outline. It is a great pity that this particular book, which shows signs of having the elements of the author's masterpiece inherent in it, should have been unfinished al the time of her death. The story is quite simple in its essential features, and shows the attempt made by several perfectly adequate American .girls to enter New York society. The Social Register keeping its clasps securely closed against them, they decide that they may be more successful in another and perhaps even more exclusive environment, and decide to take London society by storm. They succeed. Mrs. Wharton's book is well titled. These young Americans make very satisfactory "buccaneers."

Various aspects of social life, in the seventies in Saratoga, New York, and London are described in the most entertaining way. It is otily unfortunate that the latter part of the book lacks something of the coherence or body which Mrs. Wharton, had she lived, would assuredly have imparted, to it. Her male, characters, for example, are flat, titled nonentities. Wjit^i a little more time, a little more shaking down iof the various features of the story, the reader knows. instinctively that Mrs. Wharton would have drawn them in the round and made them something more than cogs in the wheel. However, although the male characters are not very much help, the women are admirable. The little group of "buccaneers"—Virginia and Nan St. George, Conchita Closson, and Lizzy Elmsworth, are, of course, entertaining and ,'presented almost as a team. But they are individual. interesting, and cleverly drawn. The best character in the book, however, is Laura Testvalley, an Anglo-Italian' governess (alleged to be a cousin of Dante Gabriel Rossetti),, and the spearhead of the attack oh London society. Laura Testvalley is a remarkable character —stronger and more convincing than any of the others in the book. Mrs. Wharton has lingered lovingly over her own creation, and in the latter part of the book has let this character get a trifle out of hand. No doubt had the book had its proper revision, this lack of balance would have been corrected and the proper proportion would have been preserved. None the less, it is easy to criticise a work which is obviously in an unfinished state. While there are faults, they are principally in the latter and unrevised part of the book; and the whole book may be taken to be some of Mrs. Wharton's best writing.

While the reader naturally has a predilection for reading a complete and fully finished work, those who are interested in the technique of a wellknown novelist will enjoy this book, partly revised and partly unrevised, giving as it does interesting -sidelights on the various stages through which the author, who works seriously in this medium, has to put his work. Posthumous publication is not always a good thing: in this case on several grounds it would be difficult to disapprove, j RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS. , \ Other titles selected from recent accession lists are as follows: —General: "It's Draughty in Front,*' by H. Hodge; "Flying Fox and '-Drifting Sand," by F. N. Ratcliffe; -"The Old: [Century arid Seven■■•'MO'rferYe&irsj" by S. Sassoon. Fiction: "Straws in Amber," by N. E. Jacob; "Star Above Paris," by J. G. Sarasin; '.'Sons of the Swordmaker," by A. ft. and R. K. Weekes.