Books Reviewed

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 519, 23 November 1928, Page 14

Books Reviewed

AN AUCKLANDER’S NOVEL SPHERE is a marked development in technique apparent in Miss Jane Mander’s new novel, “Pins and Pinnacles,” showing that the New Zealand writer is moving steadily forward in her chosen craft. This is a novel of conversation. And psychology, of course, although it is not overstressed in the morbid fashion that has gained such popularity of late years. The conversation is bookish, with occasional excursions from the impersonal to the very personal; highly necessary if a novel is to be vital and a selling proposition. “Pins and Pinnacles” is really “ ‘Pins and Pinnacles’ ” —if we may be permitted to “say it with quotation marks”— for the title draws its title from a book of fantastic tales written by one of the characters. It is round this young man, his publisher, his posterartist and his illustrator that the story revolves. One must regard Mirabel as a singularly lucky young

woman to possess at least three devoted admirers in a man-less age. But it was so. And she appeared to have the necessary sense to keep them all in moderately good humour, one with the other ... a thing that is not done solely by the exercise of what Mrs. Elinor Glyn has so tersely described as “It.” In the production of this book-within-a-book, Mirabel and publisher Paul manage to fall from the platonic plane and in the fullness of time we are able to witness a happy ending, not, however, before tragedy has intervened. The char-

aeterisat.ion is consistently even and the dramatic moment in which the abnormal John Craik, protege of Paul, commits suicide after having attempted to commit murder (all Mirabel’s male acquaintances were not equally adulatory, it will be seen!) is a good piece of work. Miss Maiider has abandoned the New Zealand setting for her stories. “The Besieging City,” her preceding novel, was of New York. This one has as its milieu, the cosmopolitan life of London and Paris. It does not give Miss Mander a chance of painting her vivid word pictures of natural beauties, but it demonstrates her versatility in good challenging work and she may congratulate herself upon the result. • “Pins and Pinnacles.” Hutchinson and Co., Ltd., 34-36 Paternoster Row, London, E.C.4. Where the White-faced Gurgles Grow In a realm peopled by very perfect knights (mounted on bone-spavined palfreys), fayre wimpled maidens and a sprinkling of scurvy knaves, dwells Mr. George Morrow, one of the world’s drollest and most fanciful artists. There is good hunting in Mr. Morrow’s realm, for here live such quaint and exotic brutes as the whitefaced gurgle, the pink-spotted ktullican, the pin-headed gnurk and the giant-bearded umf, to say nothing of a gnarled wyvern or so and the greenstriped unicorn. For Mr. Morrow revels in such conceits. And as the leading misleading historian of our time he should be granted a place in the Table of Precedence immediately following, at least, the younger sons of younger sons of baronets. No one can distort history so deliciously. Whfct could be droller than his portrait of the man who was "in at the kill” of William Rufus, and who rushed to the nearest fletcher for a supply of arrows in anticipation of the tourist season? Or the drawing of the artist-journalist who had the temerity to ask King John, a minute or so after the signing of Magna Charta, to pose for him in the attitude of signing a document of State? Mr. Morrow’s exuberant fancy finds wonderful outlet in this direction. And who has not chuckled at his series of “Entertainments at Which We Have Never Assisted” in “Punch” —notably the Annual Dinner of the Omar Khayyam Club, with elderly suburban couples seated at the usual banquettable, each complete with book of verse, loaf and jug of wine and with a bent bough, waving aspidistrally over each unromantic pair, from a conveniently-placed vase. All these, and other, Morrow gems are to be found in “Some More Drawings by George Morrow,” a splendidly-repre-sentative collection of this artist’s best work, with seven plates in colour. “Some More Drawings by George Morrow.” Methuen and Co., Ltd., London, Our copy from the publishers. Tommy Tucker—Vocalist and Tinker The old rhyme tells us that Tommy Tucker, essentially materialistic, made his presence acqfely known whenever supper was in the air, but Tommy Tucker, the happy vagabond, although a vocalist with the same mundane needs, sang his way into greater things than that. A sheaf of stories by Margaret Fane and Hilary Lofting, which originally appeared in the “Sydney Mail,” have now been collected. Under the title of “The Happy Vagabond,” they present the Australian Outback in its most cheerful mood. Jilted and disillusioned. Tommy Tucker seeks solace where the noise of great conquests dims to an echo and bread and butter is regal fare. As a pedlar of safety pins and tapes, a mender of pots and pans, and a tuner of tired pianos, he finds a life of such diversity and fascination that happiness falls like an unexpected jewel into his tinker's kit. “The Happy Vagabond,” by Margaret Pane and' Hilary Lofting. Our copy comes from the publishers, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. The Band-Wagon What Mr. Lowell Schmaltz, the allAmerican hero of Mr. Sinclair Lewis’s “The Man Who Knew Coolidge,” would have said to Mr. Charles Merz after reading “Bigger and Better Murders” one trembles to think. Mr. Merz, a journalist on the editorial staff of the New York “World,” has joined the ranks of the Lewises, the Menckens, and the George Jean Nathans —-men who never tire of poking relentless fun at the circus tricks current in some phases of life in a mighty and bedollared land. Mr. Merz’s satire, however, has a more general application than that of the others: the necessary changes being made, his book might apply to England or Australia or any other country that has moved with the times. In “Bigger and Better Murders” (what a selling

title!) Mr. Merz takes tlie Babbitry to task in most urbane fashion, and riders on the great American band-wagon, ballyhoo artists and the rest of ’em, come in for a spray from his mordant pen. The illustrious, exalted, imperial and other grandiloquentlynamed secret societies are a joy to bim. He marvels at the number of ‘royals” and “ancients” that adjectivally sprinkle the country. “Their popularity,” he says, “is understandable in a nation which has neither royalty nor antiquity but a vicarious enthusiasm for them both.” The chapter headings give adequate indication of the fare to be found within. “Tom-Tom” deals with that great god Radio. “The New American Bar” opens with the rather dreadful thought: “One half-billion dollars’ worth of soda water washes its way annually into the great American stomach.” In a chapter on the exploitation of the bathing beauty we learn that 350 candidates clamoured for the honour of being adjudged owner of the most perfect spine in Lc.s Angeles—at a Progressive Chiropractors’ Association get-together. A note on American hustle: Fifty-five minutes to Antwerp ten minutes from the railway station to the Cathedral, fourteen minutes in the Cathedral for Reubens’ Descent from the Cross and six for the Elevation, ten minutes back to the railway station, five minutes for the nearest approach to a ham sandwich that can be had in a somewhat Godforsaken country, and ten minutes’ leeway to catch the next train for Holland—this is rather ample allow Tance for north-eastern Belgium. All phases of: current American lifa are treated in the same facile and entertaining way. “Bigger and Better Murders ” has had a succes d'estime in America. It is not likely to register a succes fou there, one would imagine. “Bigger and Better Murders.” Victor Gallancz, Ltd., 14 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. Surprises, Thrills. . , . “Six Minutes Past Twejve” is a Gavin Holt crime story that moves through platoons of surprises at an engrossing pace. A financier whose past would not bear examination is found dead by a country road. It looked like suicide —but it wasn’t. It looked like a large number of other things—but it wasn’t those either. To be exact, it was a case of justifiable homicide, in which the gentleman responsible did it all for the sake of his lady-love, and more particularly for the sake of his future brother-in-law and the escutcheon of an ancient family. Justice was served, without recourse to the gallows, through the ingenious persistence of a scientist who had gone to the country for a holiday. The racy narrative even brings in a Derby winner. “Six Minutes Past Twelve.” By Gavin Holt. Hodder and Stoughton. Our copy from the publishers’ Australian representatives. A New Deeping Novel. Thirty thousand copies of Warwick Deeping’s latest novel, “Old Pybus,” were sold in London on the day of publication—and the public’s faith was justified. The book is one’ that stands as a tall rock in a sea of books that are readable stories and no more. Pybus, philosopher and patriot, who disowned his two successful businessmen sons because of their backwardness in the war, finds the child of his heart in his only grandson. Their meeting, their comradeship, and their long and intimate talks on problems

of the age make the novel live. Warwick Deeping has given his readers another real picture of life. “Old Pybus.” Warwick Deeping. Cassell. Our copy from the publishers. Everyman. The new Volumes of Everyman’s Library are issued with new wrappers and the appearance of the books is greatly improved. The complicated gilt design which till now has covered all the back has been discarded in favour of a simpler one —a small, neat decoration over the title, and an equally neat decoration beneath it. The lower half of the book is left plain. The books themselves are worthy additions to a splendid series. Mr Ernest Rhys has chosen “A New Book of Sense and Nonsense” (No. 813). It reprints Abbott’s famous “Flatland,” and draws on Hans Andersen, Gilbert, Calverley, Hood, and many more, down to D. B. Wyndham Lewis and J. C. Squire. No. 814 is Hazlitt’s “The Plain Speaker,” which contains some of the very best of Hazlitt’s essays. They are introduced by P. P. Howe. Bunyan’s “The Life and Death of Mr Badman,” together with “Grace Abounding,” makes No. 815 one of the richest volumes in the series. “Mr Badman” is a masterpiece no less than “Pilgrim’s Progress.” No. 816 is Susan Ferrier’s "Marriage,” a delightful novel, too good to have been neglected as it has been. In No. 817 the evergreen “Jorrocks’ J: unts and Jollities” wins the honour of appearing in a classical series, and well sustains it; and the “Eighteenth Century Plays” of No. 818 are well chosen, from Addison’s “Cato” to Cumberland’s "The West Indian.” “The Beggar’s Opera” is, of course, included. Fitzgerald’s “Omar” and his translations of six plays by Calderon appear together in No. 819. It is rvell done to give both the first and the second editions of the Rubaiyat. “More Fairy Tales” of Hans Andersen, with a few pleasant drawings by Mary Shillabeer —this is No. 822, sure to be one of the most popular numbers in the library. The choice of these additions gains the warmest congratulations for the publishers, J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., from whom our copies come. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED “The Book of Liverpool.” Commemorating Liverpool’s Civic Week, 1925. With etchings and drawings illustrative of the progress and picturesqueness of this flourishing port. Our copy from the Liverpool Organisation, 357 Royal Liver Buildings, Liverpool.