BOOKS REVIEWED.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 43, 13 May 1927, Page 10

BOOKS REVIEWED.

CRAZY PAVEMENTS. E EVERYBODY in London has been reading this book, so we are told; but on reading it for ourselves we begin to wonder why. As a story it is negligible. A better writer than Mr Nichols might make much of Mr Nichols’s theme —“the moral degeneration of a young man taken up by a set of pleasure-loving people": indeed, at risk of causing Mr Nichols’s admirers to sniff, one may recall that Honors de Balzae, though now of course quite played out as a novelist, once blundered into some sort of minor triumph in dealing with such a theme. But Mr Nichols, with all the advantages of being 25 and London's brightest bright young man, makes nothing of it. As a moralist, Mr Nichols burdens his tale with the weighty doctrine that it is better to be healthy, happy, poor, and stupid than to dwell in the flats of the ungodly. As a student of human character, Mr Nichols has learned much from the monkey-house, the fowl-run, and the works of Michael Arlen, and a little from misunderstanding Max Beerbohm’s Lord George Hell. But from life he is far too knowing to learn anything at all. As a damning revelation of the life of London’s most aristocratic dope-flends, perverts, lechers, and half-wits, the book damns and bangs away with such hearty good will that from page to page one expects London’s Most Vicious Peer to be revealed in pantomime-red flames and a sulphurous stink as the Devil Himself. Mr Nichols is one of the whole-hoggers, who never stop decorating the truth till it is all over fur, feathers, and war-paint, a figure to scare children and make their elders split with laughing. As a wit, Mr Nichols is now about 10 year 3 of age. We preferred him when he was 21, cock-a-hoop fresh from Oxford and so full of himself that there was room for nothing else. To say so much is to take Mr Nichols and his book seriously, which is perhaps a great mistake. But Mr Jonathan Cape, his publisher, must be blamed for that. But for Mr Cape’s blurbs, we should simply say that “Crazy Pavements” is a rash, flash, noisy, boyish book, quite readable, and let it go at that. “Crazy Pavements.” Beverley Nichols Jonathan Cape. Oul* copy from the publisher, through Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. A Brilliant Novel.

It is pleasant that a reprint of Mrs E, Barrington’s novel, "Glorious Apollo,” has been issued. The book has just come to hand, and the story of Byron, with all his immature romanticism and passion, is skilfully and artistically told in a blending of history and Action. As Mrs Barrington says, the story is a tremendous one, and she controls the tremendous theme with

taste and admirable restraint. One’s feelings about Byron are apt to be very mixed at the conclusion of the story, but a kind of revulsion at the evident truth of a masterly piece of character-drawing is the predominab ing emotion. Byron, beginning as a figure of romance, stalks finally through the pages as a sinister shadow, cursed by heredity, and cursed in a like degree by his genius.

“Glorious Apollo.” Mrs E. Barrington Harrap and Co., London. Our copy from the publishers’ agents. Robertson and Mullens, Ltd., Melbourne. The Misses Mallett.

Francis Sales’s petulant marriage ■with the last pretty girl he had met, as substitute for Rose Mallett, the girl he had so often sought, was followed by a hunting accident which crippled his young bride for life. The idle and lonely life of a disappointed man is at once relieved and tormented by the friendship which Rose offers and which all three realise has grown through sympathy to love. But Francis is a man who must have, not friendship merely, but romance; and when loneliness and despair seem greatest the young niece of the Malletts comes to Radstowe. This delightful creature is at length enslaved by one all powerful motive—to be wanted, to be loved, to be essential to someone in the world, £o be indispensable. To Rose? To her elder aunts? Insufficient. The some one, of all people, is doomed to be Francis Sales. The satisfactory part played by a young man named Charles in deflecting this passionate torrent will reveal the finer qualities of an otherwise seemingly grotesque character. In addition to the younger characters in this most enchanting romance, the reader is introduced to two dear old ladies, Miss Caroline, who dominates (nobody) with magnificent impressiveness and Miss Sophia, gently agreeing with ;he meekness of the unconvinced. “The Misses Mallett.” E. H. Young. Jonathan Cape. Our copy conies from Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. “Portia Marries.” In “Portia Marries,” a first novel, Jeannette Phillips Gibbs writes on the question whether a woman should sacrifice a professional career on marriage. She takes the courageous view that no sacrifice is necessary. The literary skill of the author can be praised, but discretion forbids any criticism of the argument she advances. For since her marriage, Mrs Gibbs herself, who was admitted to the American bar in 1918, has coellinued to do legal work. Presumably, Mrs Gibbs writes with exact knowledge. But that does not banish the hope that she will write another novel in which she will not tie the hands of the male critic. Her literary attainments certainly arouse ■he desire tbat she will write again.