HYSTERICAL BUT IT HAS ITS POINTS

Radio Record, 22 July 1938, Page 30

HYSTERICAL BUT IT HAS ITS POINTS

BY and large I haven’t got much sympathy for the hysterical style. But in certain instances there are writers who can very nearly get away with it. D. Frances Young, author of ""The Unfinished Symphony" and, more lately, "Stray Cat," is a pastmaster at the art of "rending erlmson curtain" and entering the room so to speak like a streak of coal-black lightning-n pastmaster of exotic seductions and in portrayal of precocious babes who Jearn the facts of life before they cut their milk teeth. Provided you like your fiction terse, over-coloured, violent, vivid, episodic, heart-rending, mildly pornographie and portraying life through a_ distorted magnifying glass that comes to rest only on some highly imaginative abnorinality, you will be.able to bear "Stray Cat." Still, for all the author's love of deep dyes and baroque patterns, there are the glimmerings of convincing characterisation in "Stray Cat." It is a distorted bit of work, but it possesses a flavour you may find stimulating-or infuriating, according to your upbring. ing in fiction. "Stray Cat," by D. Frances Young (Hutchinson, London.) Our copy from the publisher.