HISTORY AGAIN
DOUBLE MUSCADINE, by Frances Gaither; Michael Joseph. English price, 10/6. THE GOD-SEEKER, by Sinclair Lewis; , Heinemann. Enf§lish price, 12/6. | HESE two American novels both have historical settings, both about a hundred years,old. In both the history is important; in Sinclair Lewis’s book it mght well be called all-important. _ Aaron Gadd sets out first to seek God in the West as a missionary to the Indians, finds the Sioux almost as likely to convert him, marries, and settles down to. worshipping a different sort of god, Progress (with occzsional backslidings). What promises at one moment to be a tragic theme becomes instead a /somewhat pedestrian but usually pleas- | ant Saga of the infancy of the state of Minnesota, a slighter work than one would expect of Sinclair Lewis. Frances Gaither’s account of a trial in the deep Scuth (Mississippi) of a Negro woman, a slave, for murder, is. a work of deeper scope, a human drama _ handled with force and assurance, history playing second fiddle to the heart beats; a good deal of narrative skill is shown in _ postponing the denouement and in develoving the real moral status of. the chief characters. But then it is an ad- _ vantage in writing a novel to have a plot; this has a good one.
David
Hall
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 555, 10 February 1950, Page 16
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215HISTORY AGAIN New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 555, 10 February 1950, Page 16
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