BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 212, 7 August 1937, Page 7

BOOK NOTES

“SON OF HAN.” Richard la Die re should have a considerable success with his first novel, “Soil of Han,” just published. He has chosen China, five hundred years ago, as his setting, and against, this background ho has placed a set of characters which have as their essential qualities simplicity, sincerity and a sense of timelessness which are both impressive and strangely fascinating. M. La Piere deals with jovc and marriage, aspiration, success and failure, and, above all, the complete pre-occu-pation with the ancestral code which is at the root of all Chinese family life. The fundamental struggle which confronts all intelligent human beings, the struggle between ideas and hard facts of existence, is the core of the book. Around it is woven the intricate pattern of everyday life in that remote place and time. The author has the peculiar gift of getting right inside his characters. They are alive, not mere puppets of a. bygone age cleverly reconstructed in the light of modern knowledge, strutting against a synthetic romantic background. Real flesh ami blood men, women and children, with emotions like our own, though their tradition is far different, their skin of a darker pigmentation, their ideal of life here and hereafter distatecl by a different philosophy. The seventh son of a seventh son has been born to the house of Han. The patriarch officiates at the birth of Little Dragon, and before he is many days old has mapped out his entire future. His father, his uncle and their father are, as in AVestcrn countries, relegated to a very minor position for a time, but they, too, have decided upon the future of Little Dragon. He must be a scholar and. one day. a public official. He must fulfil tlie highest dream of the Chinese middle-class man of this distant era. Dragon’s father and grandfather had striven towards the goal, until life’s endless claims upon their time and strength finally discouraged and overwhelmed them. It is impossible to read the 6torv of Dragon’s fight for knowledge without feeling beneath it the history of all human endeavour. It is in this universal appeal that the main strength of M. la Piere’s book lies.

“THE HOUSE BY THE SEA.” There is a naive transparency about -Mrs Belloc Lownde’s new novel, “The House By tiie Sea,” which gives it that particular flavour associated with tlie melodramas of an earlier period. The scene is laid on the Riviera. Here the gentle and beautiful Marehcsa Frescobaldi is entertaining a house party at her chateau. Her faithful admirer, Colonel Bruce, a hard-boiled young Englishwoman, Joan Pevcral, and John Vanderlyn, a young American diplomat, accompany her to the cave of Aboul-Hassan to look hack into the past and hear about the future. Each is told of some imminent milestone in his or her life; some experience which will I>c highly significant; some kind of evil fortune lying in wait. The remainder of the story consists of the working out of AboulHassan’s prophecies in the lives of each and of John Vanderlyn in particular. This is a book for readers who like mild excitement presented with a due regard for good manners, preserved tinder the most trying circumstances. “THE SATURDAY MATCH.” Here is a most pleasant book, a story for people who can snatch a ferv hours from the trying business of being earnest and modern, and can relax in the cpiiet atmosphere of English country - cum - seaside village cricket, thoroughly nice people, dogs, and healthy, enjoyable children. In this milieu Hugh de Selincourt is thoroughly at home. His style - of writing is as charming as the story he has to tell. The latter is concerned mainly w 7 ith the sorrows of a small boy, Kimpie, whose dog has been stolen, and the excitement of the same small boy when he ■ is invited to play for Tillingford in, of all things, a Saturday match. Not a mid-w 7 eek match, but a Saturday affair, an occasion fraught with thrills and responsibility. Using a very leisurely pen, the author works up to this grand occasion, pausing en route to draw the curtain on the Kimpton menage, to show the happy atmosphere in which Kimpie and his sister ltuth are growing up, loitering over absorbing hours spent in bathing, prawning, and playing tip and run on the beach, dawdling with Kimpie and Tom the post-

man as they discuss such recondite subjects as dogs and ratting. The whole effect of this novel is one of mellowness, a delight in simpV pleasures, a feeling for the graciousness which can be injected into the business of living. One feels that Mr de Selincourt enjoyed writing it; there will be a very large number of people who will enjoy reading it. REMARQUE. After some years of silence, Erich Maria Remarque has published his third novel, now translated into English by A. W. AVheen under the title ol “Three Comrades.” It is a good novel, better than either of its two predecessors, less spectacular than “All Quiet on the Western Front,” hut more mature and less hysterical than that best-seller. Once again he has used as his major theme the comradeship between men which was the finest thing developed by the Great War. Interwoven with this, however, is a love story, beautiful, real, and, at the end, tragic. This combination of comradeship and Jove makes a story which, while naturalistic in form and treatment, yet breathes a spirit of idealism rare enough in the literature of the current decade. The author has idealised a strong bond between individuals instead of playing-up, in conventional modern fashion, the brotherhood between all men. His characters have a tendency to reminisce about the war, to sing old songs, which as soldiers, they sang in the 1014-1918 period. Most returned soldiers found it difficult to settle down again in civilian surroundings. But, if this were so in countries like Australia, .England, and America, how much more difficult must it have been in Germany. As for the love story in this novel, its force, as is the case" with every love story ever written, will depend on the attitude of the individual towards a theme which has inspired nine-tenths of the world’s literature. Remarque has not sentimentalised the love between Robert Lohkamp and Pat. Indeed, he lias kept it throughout on a very realistic plane.