Books.

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 35, 15 March 1929, Page 15

Books.

THE OTHER GATE,

Vere

Hutchinson

I, as one understands, this writer is sister of the A. S. M. Hutchinson who electrified a section of the novelreading public with "If Winter Comes," then a curious anomaly is apparent. The latter highly emotional tale exhibits frequent passages of exaggerated excitement amounting to hysteriaIn Miss Vere Hutchinson’s tales, however, there is an entire absence of that element; each and eyery one of* them showing stark simplicity of portrayal and elemental sincerity. "Sea Wrack," a strong and sombre novel, lives in the recollection A supernatural element is introduced by reincarnation in a feathered fowl of the soul of the dead; and an authentic shudder created by bird of illomen in which recur repellent aura and venomous tongue of an old woman, married for money by her unhappy husband, who is screeched into frenzy by the odious white cockatoo that gives its name to the tale. Futility, monotony, the sense of lost illusion are accentuated. Ranging many types and countries, perhaps the best portrait is of a little cockney clerk, into whose grey life comes sudden adventure. A hapless lovely lady is blackmailed, fate makes him unwilling spectator, chivalry is roused, and drab plodder transformed into Quixote. His laudable murder committed, bidding farewell to his rose of beauty, quietly he goes back to life as it is, and flabby, muddling wife Nellie, who goes on grumbling, not realising she greets a hero unaware. "The Scarecrow" tells of Nemesis pursuing illicit love; and "The Other Gate" breathes all romance of the world. A strange, quiet woman grows weary of "doing out the duty" for clods who are husband and son, ties a handkerchief over tawny locks, takes her bundle, and walks off into the sunset to the lover of her youth. "He didn’t treat me right sometimes," she said, "but always he’d come back to me, and be proud of me-the way I dressed, the way men looked, the way I’d be there to laugh with him.... I’m fit for nothing, neither children nor Loswithalle.... Maybe it wasn’t for children I was born; it was for Harry, : Harry.’ There speaks the passionate lover: the woman who for her man, her mate, counts the world well: lost and everyone in it.-R.U.R.