BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 218, 14 August 1937, Page 15

BOOK NOTES

"SUNSET AT NOON." Those who remember Miss Ruth Feiner’s first novel, ‘‘Cat Across the Path,” will welcome "Sunset at Noon.” This author has another good story to tell; and she tells it with conviction and a wealth of detail, enhanced by flashes of shrewd insight into the mind and make-up of that enigmatic figure, the modern woman. She is concerned as to whether independence,* loyalty and straightforwardness are assets in a woman’s character’' and, in order to illustrate her case, she lias chosen Constantine Flemming, child of the spoilt daughter of a wealthy family and a man who committed suicide because, being an idealist and an artist, he could not submit to mediocrity, which was all that post-war Vienna offered him. Like many novelists, Miss Feiner has chosen a character subject to inevitable abnormalities. No child whose mother has left home soon after her birth, and whose father has committed suicide soon after her sixth birthday, is likely to be normal. Constantine, at this early age, was jerked into a precocious maturity. She was adopted by her wealthy uncle, and reached the age of sixteen after taking full advantage of a generous education. Then her unci© married, and Stanzi soon became conscious that the life of a social young lady, in a menage a trois, did not appeal to her. She entered the Flemming Motor Works as a clerk. There followed an affair with one of her uncle’s employees. Piet Lorenz’s spineless defection taught her a terrible lesson, from which she emerged into fully fledged individuality. Helium gi nation and her fluent pen now stood her in good stead, and alone, unaided. she slowly climbed back to selfrespect and, later, to fame. Stanzi’s contacts are all skilfully chosen with the purpose of throwing light on every a.ngle of her character. Her .reaction to Piet Lorenz when, at the height of her fame, ho reappears is logical; and her slow but inevitable capitulation to the man who, in the early stages of her career as a writer, ridiculed her. is equally convincing. The pictures of post-war Vienna are full of life n.nd colour.

NEIL BELL

A new novel bv Mr Neil Boll*, one of the foremost figures in contemporary English literature, is an event of importance in the world of fiction. MiBell has already created sonic magnificent characters; "The Testament of Stephen Fane” will further enhance his reputation. In telling the life-story of this man, “from birth to something less tolerable than death,” the author has used his highly developed powers of artistry and craftsmanship towards a significant end. His 'contention is that, to the normal average Englishman, life is essentially emotional experience. Stephen Fane, latest son of a long, lusty line of shipbuilders, lived his early childhood at Solebyy a small Suffolk fishing village. He worshipped his father and admired his mother. In spite of his parents’ hopeless incompatability his early days were not unhappy. Tragedy, however, overtook him when his father was drowned, and liis removal to his grandmother’s houso in London at the age of seven was a definite land-r mark in his career. His mother remawied, and Steiihen’s life was, on the surface, the life of a boy subjected to uncongenial, though not abnormal, conditions. From a very early age he felt the inherited urge of his blood, and a series of childish- sweethearts served to satisfy his as yet latent masculinity. In early manhood Stephen had the good fortune to find a congenial occupation, in which he was to rise to a highly-paid and responsible post. But his career was interrupted by the war. In order to sustain the atmosphere he has already created, MiBell commits to nrint, with grim realism, all the horrors of that almost intolerable nightmare.

“DEATH ON THE BOARD.”

The most remarkable feature in the well written detective novel, “Death On the Board.” is the ingenuity with which the author, John Rhode, has planned the methods by which the five directors of Porslin, Ltd., are murdered. So cunningly, indeed, are the killings carried out that for quite a long time the police cannot even establish the fact that murder has been committed, let alone track down the person responsible. Starting off with a mysterious explosion in the home of Sir Andrew Wiggenhall, chairman of directors of Porslin, the action develops with other apparently accidental or suicidal deaths following in quick succession. Turnstead, another director, is burned to death in his bed; Percival Wiggenhall is the victim of poisoning; Colonel Fiotman is gassed in the engine-room which supplies his homo with electricity. Samuel Grimshaw is also the victim of gas—his death being even more ingeniously planned. Working very carefully, and at no time sacrificing entertainment value to sheer virtuosity in the art of murder, Mr Rhode has wi ft ten a story which will interest all admirers of this type of fiction. As his story draws to a close, the identity of the killer becomes more and more unmistakable, but the nature of the plot and the logical development of motive and opportunity to kill make a last-minute unmasking of the villain impossible.

“HAWK OF THE WILDERNESS.”

Tho actual birthplace of the American Indian has been a fruitful field for conjecture and scientific research. This fine race which has dwindled and deteriorated beyond measure owing to its contact with Western civilisation has, as its background, a wealth of •story and song' which is to be found amongst few other races. Mr William L. Chester, in a novel entitled “Hawk of the Wilderness,” has mado Hopelca, head village of a lost tribe, the setting for still another legend. “The earliest threads of the narrative,” he says, “go back, roughly, to the turn of the century. In unravelling them we find ourselves almost at once aboard a staunch little vessel, tho Cherokee, cruising, according to latitudes given in her log, in the mild waters of the North Pacific Ocean, near the’ Aleutian Islands, south of the Bering Sea.” The owner and navigator, Dr. Lincoln Rand, had equipped the ship and taken his wife and a faithful Indian, Mokuyi, on a voyage of healing to isolated peoples of the north. A storm drove tho Cherokee out of her course, and lie was wrecked on an uncharted coast, supposed to bo a remote corner of Siberia, which had once been linked to Alaska. Owing to Mokuyi’s knowledge of Indian dialect, the white adventurers were accepted in Hopelca, and a few months later Lincoln Rand, junr., was born. He was called Kioga, the Snow Hawlc, by the Indians. When Kioga was three weeks old his parents perished in a raid. The child was, miraculously, unhurt, and became the foster-son of the faithful Mokuyi and his wife Awena. He throve, and at an early age was able to throw a straight arrow and withstand rigorous natural conditions. His growth and development in that primeval land, for a time with a family of bear cubs, makes

fascinnting reading, and if tho reader’s credulity is sometimes strained his interest will rarely flag. The return of Snow Hawk to the land of his fathers, and his subsequent rejection of the Western world, brings the book to a fitting close.