FANTASTIC REALISM.t THE three stories collected in this volume are
examples of the art of fantasy. They are true to a mood but not to a whole- hearted understanding of life ; at least, if they are thought to exhaust experience, life must seem a very warped and insane affair. Here is the puppetry of Mr. Hardy reduced from the scale which gives it grandeur to a snivelling and malignant intrigue between Man and Fate. But we must enter the village and meet the creatures of Mr. Powys's inuigination on their own doorsteps ; there can be no object in asking them to put on fine airs which their creator had not designed for them. And very curious figures they make, in a very typical village of topsy-turvydom, where the thatched cottages are " like little old women who cried in wet weather." It is the sort of impression one might get of a hillside hamlet in a rush past on a bicycle. The little gardens arc bright with flowers, and on warm evenings the air is thick with their scent. In a field a red patch is being trampled on by a bull, whose white horns are sinisterly red. A farmer watches the fate of Ann, the red patch, complacently from a gate. A little further on we see him tyrannizing over his labourer's family, and just round the next corner lie acts as no character in polite fiction should act . . . but, as casual cyclikts, author and reader do not • Grey Wethere. By V. Backvine•West. London : Heidemann. [7e. Gd. netA t 2 he Left lip. By T. F. Powys. London: Mato and Wludus. [7s. bd.] perhaps treat the incident with the seriousness of an inhabitant. When, at the bottom of the hill, we find the village idiot gaping at the detached left leg of the evil-minded farmer, who had stood on a barrel of gunpowder and applied a match, we are certainly convinced that Mr. Powys is a passer-by. None the less, as an antidote to the idyllic irregularities of the George Sand peasants who still inhabit too many of our English novelists' villages, it is both timely and effective. Mr. Powys frequently writes very brightly, but his restless eye would do him better service if it could find some object worth its constancy. Having so thoroughly exploited the sordidness of rural life he owes it to his talent to find some region where it may gather a less acidic crop.
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