Jottings

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 31, 12 February 1932, Unnumbered Page

Jottings

OSH who read Miss Stella Ben- ‘ gon’s book, "This is the End." published in the war years, have kept a steady eye on her recurrent literary output.. This has been interesting and original work, and her latest book, "Tobin Transplanted," will not disappoint. It is a story of Manchuria, and is first favourite for the year’s Femina-Vie Heureuse. Miss Benson, in actual life Mrs.. O’Gorman Anderson, has travelled extensively, but China is at present her home, her husband being an official in the Chinese Customs service. Her experience of life has been varied and for a time she kept a shop in Hoxton, where she had gained many revealing psychological sidelights from her cockney customers. * * * "TL ESLEY STORM" is a graduate cf Aberdeen University and the wife of Dr. J. R. D. Clark, who practises in the Limehouse district, She has already written two novels, and her latest book, "he Secret Marriage," is excellent according to its fashion. It is the story of two bright young things who make a secret marriage, going back to their respective avocntions from Monday till Friday and spending the week-ends together. During one of their bean-feasts they are tracked down by an unpleasant person from the home town of Robin, that modern youth, who keeps the interloper quiet by ingenious methods. Then there is Annie Armstrong, with a strong mother-in-law complex, an admirable presentment of a type, who swamps the young wife in a morass of sentiment, making her "the scapegoat for the daughters she did not have." This breezy modern comedy makes good reading and should not be missed by those in search of light entertainment. s * *

AN American writer, Mr. Arthur +* Hodges, has written a novel that inevitably challenges comparison with Mr. Galsworthy’s "Man of Property." A brave man indeed, for though the Forsyte Saga may or may not appeal to all in a like degree, there can he no doubt of its amazingly — skilful craftsmanship, and its value as a balanced, thoughtful, and entirely able presentment of past and present social life. . "The Man of Substance" essays to do something of the same thing, and concerns family history of an American clan. Wall Street and political grait, it goes without saying, play their part, and there is also much anent the Muses and fhe lighter side of life. But, as already said, the story invites a comparison that, one surmises, assuredly must be to its disadvantage.