• Fiction

Dover Harbour. By Thomas Armstrong. (Collins. los. 6d.) The Shears of Destiny. By Winifred Duke. (Jarrolds. los. 6d.) The Dawn Is Ours. By Charles Terrot. (Collins. 78. 6d.) Treveryan. By Angela du Maurier. (Michael Joseph. 95. 6d.) AWING the many ways of choosing a novel from the library a peep at the final paragraph is popular. It is not really a very suitable method for a reviewer, though, because he is likely to get depressed at the prospect before him: he's got to read the book anyway and can't just pop it back on the shelf with the middle and beginning for ever unread. But the method has its points: from Dover Harbour for a start : "For another moment they looked deeply at one another, and then arm-in-arm, her elbow pressed against his side, his hand tightly grasping hers, Captain and Mrs. Fagg of Dover moved in to the growing dusk. Soon full darkness would spread its concealing canopy over the old Cinque Port of Dover, over its Castle and Harbour, over men who, in the name of liberty, would ever faithfully defend their priceless heritage." The perfect end of a film : one can see the setting sun and the -flag fluttering bravely as the happy Fags fade out. The novel has everything a film producer asks for and more: smuggling, -spies, bankers, love, kiddies, naval battles, scenery, comic relief, close-ups, patriotism, costumes, famous historical figures, crowd scenes; a vehicle for popular stars that might if handled really lavishly, have a success equal to Gone With the Wind. The story' is of two quarrelsome friends, their families and their affairs which are very dosely bound up with the harbour at Dover and its vicissitudes. The period is between 1789 and 1809 when England was threatened with invasion. In spite of topicality the novel is very slow and, for one reader at least, too long by half.

A second attempt from The Shears of Destiny gives us : "The river! It is near now.' 'Does she mean the Mersey?'- Mr.

Hodgson muttered helplessly. Blue,' said Ann steadily, 'and the

white sea-birds.' 'She means the river in my picture, sir,' Harry answered. 'Freedom..' The sea-birds wheeled and winged far away.

The child on the bed was near a greater freedom. Ann Sievewright

smiled—and died." This novel also has historical background, but covers rather more than a century in time, opening on the eve of

Culloden. The first heroine, Morag Graham of Glengarvie, marries Captain Wade, one of the Duke of Cumberland's officers. Her eldest brother is a rebel, who in due course escapes to France Morag goes, at considerable peril, to see him first, in consequence

her husband suspects a lover. Morag died in child-birth, after a reconciliation. Her daughter is heroine of part two. Brought up

cruelly by Grandmatna Wade, she is enabled to marry a farmer of Scots origin by the timely intervention of her Godfather the Duke. In part three we are in Scotland again, and this time it's the niece

and nephew of the original Morag who fall in love at first sight.

The two branches of the Glengarvie family are at last friends again. For the final part, Miss Duke, feeling we have been given more than

our fair share of love at first sight, romance and repetition, turns the descendants of Morag into prosperous soapmakers. Poor doomed

bastard Ann is daughter of a bastard son of the head of the firm. Ann is a social reformer, and manages to annoy her respectable relations with considerable success before the climax which brings about her end. Plenty of movement of a conventional kind, but not a very convincing whole.

And here are the happy pair at the end of The Dawn is Ours: "We—I mean our generation—have a huge responsibility ; we've got to build up a new world. We'll do it all right! But now you and I can feel that we're not just doing the job for some vague future generation. We're doing it for this small person. We believe in ourselves and we believe in the future. So why shouldn't we feel happy? " The atmoaphere of the whole novel is "terribly, terribly happy" ; the story, told in the first person, relates how a young film camera-man meets and falls in love with the daughter c.f a minor American diplomat at the first night of a film, just before the outbreak of war. Dine at the Ritz, dance at the Savoy, with a flick in between, Penny's photograph in the Tatter, Mummy painted by de Lazio, dogs called " Pup " and " Sandwich " set the tone. But love's young dream creaks a little, for the war comes, and Penny's father thinks she should go back to the U.S.A. The young man gets a commission in a tank corps, and after a high-spirited course of training is sent out to France. The girl's father is won over at last, and on his first leave the happy couple wed. After a single night of bliss he learns of an expected "flap," and rushes back to France in time to play a part in the retreat after the tragic clibikle of 1940. Mr. Terrot's giddy style is toned down for a brief interval by that great catastrophe, but soon all is gay again.

A country house in Cornwall, and its inhabitants are the stuff of Miss du Maurier's melodrama of the nineteenth century. The beautiful heroine and her handsome brother discover their father died a raving madman and, in order such a strain may not continue, decide on celibate lives. The young woman sends her beloved away. After some years the brother, weakening, marries. Our heroine slaps the face of his pregnant wife, after telling her the unpleasant home truth. The child is born dead. But the heroine is very determined, and ultimately she kills her brother. It is then discovered that she is of bastard birth and does not inherit the taint. She vanishes into a criminal lunatic asylum ani her younger sister (also with a blighted romance) into a convent. The house is bought by the Fun-for-All Syndicate, and here, by way of a change, are two sentences from the epilogue: "Perhaps a kindly Nazi bomb will put an end to that speculation. Somehow I cannot believe that four centuries have left you unscathed in order that you may become a centre for

the noisy, vulgar riff-raff of today." JOHN HAMPSON.