MASK AND FACES
THE MASK OF A LION, by A. T. W. Simeons; Victor Gollancz. English price, 12/6. LOVE FOR LYDIA, by H. E. Bates; Michael Joseph. English price, 12/6. OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, by D. L. Murray; Hodder and Stoughton. English price, 15/-. HE first of these novels takes its title from the leonine face of the leper. It is a sensitive and moving account of the travail of an Indian tailor, Govind, from the day he unwittingly sews a button to his thumb, through an abortive attempt at cure and several years of beggary, to his final recovery with the aid of modern drugs. This could be a story of unmitigated horror, but Govind never -quite touches the depths an outcast can, and his story contains always an element of hope, even of humour. Simeons writes fluently, unpretentiously, and with a deep sympathy, partly no doubt, innate, and partly a result of his own experience both as a leper and as a doctor treating lepers. An excellent book. Love for Lydia is Mr. Bates’s first novel with an English setting since the war. It has what must be the oldest bestselling theme: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. Between the getting and the getting again are 300-odd pages of good and evocative writing, but any _ who still regard Mr. Bates as the white
hope of English letters should now be looking elsewhere. A Book Club recommendation. D. L. Murray follows his trilogy on the Victorian era chronologically with a robust, full-blooded tale of a gambling adventurer on the English Turf of Edwardian times. It was the heyday of the peer and the chorus girl, of the tout, the pimp, the peanut-vendor and the tycoon; at least it was in the sector of Edwardian life where Mr. Murray’s outrageous Fortune dabbled her extravagent fingers. Outrageous Fortune will be fun for those who like to recall when the English were a bold and extroverted people and the world was England’s oyster.
A.S.
F.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 715, 27 March 1953, Page 15
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334MASK AND FACES New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 715, 27 March 1953, Page 15
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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