GUIDE-BOOKS OR NOVELS?

Radio Record, 19 August 1938, Page 40

GUIDE-BOOKS OR NOVELS?

WHEN I go abroad I expect I shall meekly purchase a guidebook like any other benighted wanderer and allow my interests to be ruled entirely by the printed page. On the other hand, I have not yet gone abroad-do not hope to do so for @ time yet-and, therefore, I would be very much obliged to sundry so-called novelists of the present day if they would refrain from giving me large chunks of guide-books in the midst of the writings I bad vainly prayed would entertain me. This vogue for using luxury cruises ag the setting for romantic adventures is one of the most tedious I have yet. encountered in literature. From the point of view of the authors, it may be a convenient trick to ereate exotic atmosphere, but believe me, penseratchers, it doesn’t work with readers! This week, to my sorrow, I have read two of these guide-book romances -Nora K. Strange’'s "Miss Wiston Goes Gay" and Josephine Kamm’s "Disorderly Caravan." In the first I was taken to Portugal, in the second to the Mediterranean. Both forced me into visiting historic sights,. pottering among old ruins and philosophising about the peasants. Neither for one moment persuaded me I was or wanted to be anywhere but in a small draughty living-room in Wellington, They were those sorts of booksprosy, narrow-minded, snobbishly tray-el-conscious. Of the two, ‘Miss Wiston Goes Gay’ catches t reflected charm from its heroine, the kindly, middle-aged spinster who went to Portugal to find that "fun at fortyfive’ was possible after all. From the first. she wins and holds sympathy, redeeming the book, despite its guidetracts, But the heroine of Josephine Kamm’'s novel is stupid and econyentional. When she meets an insipid schoolmaster on the way to Greece it is inevitable she will fall in love with him--equally inevitable that neither of them will ever depart from the narrowest of straight paths. Indeed, chief interest of ‘"Disorderly Caravan" is the shrewd caricatures of the tourists-the type of people who have so much money they can go on luxury cruises without experiencing even the thrill of novelty. "Miss Wiston Goes Gay" may help to drive off boredom on a wet Sunday afternoon, but "Disorderly Caravan" is too footling even to fill in time, "Miss Wiston Goes Gay," by Nora K. Strange (Hutchinson, London.) Our copy from the publishers, ‘Disorderly Caravan," by Josephine Kamm. (Harrap, London). Our copy from the publishers,