...With... BOOK and VERSE

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 48, 12 June 1931, Page 48

...With... BOOK and VERSE

By

John

O'Dreams

THE name of-Mr. J. C. Squire, poet, parodist and. essayist, needs no ‘panegyric. His fame is made, and the literary intelligentsia: is ever ready to welcome a facet of his coruscating gift of expression. In "Sunday Mornings," a suggestive title, Mr. Squire repub-. fishes certain articles formerly acclaimed in the "Observer" by virtue of their literary quality, knowledge of the world’s. ways, and omniscient acquaintance with social activities. Of a catholic taste and tolerarice, unbounded, Mr. Squire sets before us aspects of life as they appear to his seeing eye; youth and sport; age and achievement; beauty and zest of life; the striving and interest of the passing show. Those familiar with "Solomon Eagle’s" reviews will need no urge to renew acquaintance with his delightful style and illuminating presentment. In Mr. Squire’s criticism of "The Cambridge Shorter Bible’ one agrees that it was lamentable: judgment to exclude such a passage as "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might: for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest ... I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong." Also heartily it is agreed that "Canét thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades" is but poor substitute for "Canst thou bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades," and that artistically it was wicked to delete "For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out." In the short space at disposal it is impossible to do justice to the essays ef Mr. Squire. One can only commend them for richness of thought, variety of subject and beauty of diction, His tribute to Joseph Conrad it would be difficult to overpraise. "Steadfastness, honour, courage, pity, generosity: to the old abstractions he held firm." Of Thomas Hardy he says: "His heart to the last as young as his will: no faculties decayed save the purely physical, and even those preserved beyond the normal." My own delight in these essays leads me to linger, and I commend them to anyone with a ‘sense of the universatility of life, and appreciation: of the cadence and beauty of ordered expression. . : TNTEREST in the relation of religion to the maintenance of health and the cure of disease is on the increase, and is the subject of a hook entitled "Body, Mind and Spirit," by Elwood Worcester and Samuel McComb, which is said to be the outcome of thirty years’ clinical experience in the application of psychology and religion to the whole needs of man, ns .

Cie i « "BRED Like Crimson" is the rather irritating title of a good first novel, which reads uncommonly like a detailed piece of. autobiography. Miss Jar Paradine, the author, has either created or retnembered her people and atmosphere with a most convincing sense of life. It is the story of some children growing up in a Victorian vicarage with ‘a young, high-spirited, brilliant mother, and quieter, more sympathetic father; the nursemaids, gardeners, butcher-boys, cooks, *tweenies, and the rest. The home is charming; the actions of vicarage to village everything that is -delightful, right and Christian. Yet the inner atmosphere is poisoned by a prudery, sen-~ timentality and sham, against which all children, and the heroine in particular, protest. The narrative touch is admir« ably clear and detached, and the whole . book of unusual interest. & & + * ADMIRERS of the literary work of M. Andre Maurois, and there are many, will find much to enthral them in his latest novel, "The Weigher of Souls." Using a careful economy of words, M. Maurois tells the tale of a doctor who believes he can isolate the soul-energy which leaves the human body shortly after death, and made visible by means of an ultra-violet ray apparatus. This is the motif of the story, into which a romantic thread is interwoven, and the versatile Frenchman tells his tale so skilfully that almost he persuades. one to believe in the soundness and truth of the amazing tale. i * * A THRILLER to be recommended is, "The Death of a Spinster," by’ Dorothy Johnson. Old Miss Tilden is found with her throat cut, and if murdered, there are quite a number who sight possibly be the criminal. Also there is an amateur sleuth who makes more than one curious discovery before unveiling the strange and unguessed truth. Nothing, perhaps, very original in all this, but the book is written with a dash and a vim that hold attention. s m 2 SPAIN, being so much in the forefront at the moment, Mr. Jan Gordon’s "Beans Split in Spain" has been published at quite the right time. Much about that distressful country is here contained, its customs and beauties, its ways and its works; while incidentally there is a charmingly-told love story _ between an English painter and the irre~ sistible Concha, an alluring Spanish seductress. .