Exposing the Evils of

Radio Record, 3 July 1936, Page 24

Exposing the Evils of

Buying by Instalment "TF I Have Four Apples,’ by Josephine Lawrence, attacks the problem of the family which persists in destroying its happiness, its integrity, its very life, by living on the instalment system. The Hoes are people whom we meet every. day in trams, trains, shops and cinemas; blurred. messy-minded people who refuse to ‘face things as they are, but who go micawbering along waiting for something to turn up. Miss Lawrence draws. her picture

with a very vivid pen, her uncanny knowledge of the Hoes based on her experiences during the many years that she worked on a newspaper in charge of the question and answer department. We see them struggling in a fog of bewilderment, on the brink of bankruptecy, not realising that they can’t economise on their little luxuries simply because they don’t. They try to work on the system that if I have four apples and eat three, I have eight left. We watch their flounderings from our superior plane, coolly interested and rather pitying, and then, somewhere toward the end of the book, we suddenly realise, abashed, that our own name is Hoe, That is only one triumph of a book that is different. It is Miss Lawrence’s second novel, and with it she achieved an unprecedented distinction by a Book of the Month selection in America for two successive novels within two years, "If I Have Four Apples." Josephine Lawrence, Our copy from the publishers,