Jottings

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 21, 4 December 1931, Unnumbered Page

Jottings

R. T. F. POWYS has an undoubted + gflair for the macabre in literature, which is exemplified in "Unelay," bis latest strange and terrible tale. This nightmarish imaginative tour de force concerns a small village which is the halting-place of a Dread Visitant, and is not to be recommended to hysterical or squeamish readers, It is strong meat, lust reigns, and horror and Wickedness are rampant as Death stalks amidst terror-stricken community. An extraordinarily exciting story, however, with a quality of imagination that definitely enchains attention, and a power of envisagement that is extremely uncanny. x a S [ISS PAMELA FRANKAU, scion of literary stock and a chip of the old block, continues to Write novels. This very young writer has plenty of talent; as already she bas proved, and her latest novel, "Born at Sea," is cleverly constructed. She shows the tendency of a section of modern youth to dwell on the more unpleasant protagonists of life and fiction, her characters being in large part made up of blackmailers, neurotics, and other disagreeable people. Her hero is not born under a lucky star, for his wife has a lover, his heart has a tendency to play him false, and life is not exactly rose-ate-hued, However, eventually he finds an object in life that revivifies his desire to live and move and have his being in — this drab world, and the story ends on a gayer note. The story is interesting and arresting, but too much insistence is laid upon the ey side. . "THE late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has been much in the public eye and thought for a great many years, and now we have a biography of him, written by the Rev. John Lammond. a Presbyterian minister, entitled "‘Arthur Conan Doyle." The Church of Rome was Sir Artbur’s earliest spiritual home, his mind being essentially religious, and he always was on the side of the angels, a champion of lost causes, and an ardent fighter for what he considered the truth, The wife of the renowned writer contributes an epilogue to the book, in which she States that the only people he had a contempt for were moral cowards, liars, self-seekers, and those who were eruel to man or beast. Truly the Spiritualistie communion,.on whom he spent £200.000,' hiive lost a magnificent friend and comrade, * *