Fiction

BY L. A. G. STRONG.

7s. 6d.)

, The Rocky Road. By John Brophy.- (Cape: 7s. &l.)

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IN Black Mischief Mr. Evelyn Waugh is able to display than

moderns against a background even more irresponsible than ni African Coast, has had an Oxford education, and longs to bring Liverpool. His sympathies are torn

been to Europe. I know. We have the Tank. This is not' a

shot, the Paris Exhibition, the Oxford Union. I have read modern -- - books—Shaw, Arlen, Priestley. What do the gossips in the bazaars and melndra_ . know of all this ? The whole might of Evolution rides behind me ; than the Hammersands chapters ; though the scene between at my stirrups run woman's suffrage, vaccination, and vivisection. Anthony and Catherine's father shows how well Mr. Brophy . feel quite at home : mind. It may be that in the intellectual quality of Mr, " The Minister thought that you'd like to have news of the Cleugh's work lies his greatest danger. When a novelist - battle. We got it on the wireless from Matodi. We tried to heads his chapters " Nominative," " Vocative," " Accusa.

• ' No, I always have the telephone disconnected after dinner. Win keep some part of the day for oneself, you know.' many there are going to be ; and it is just possible that the verything. Let me see, which of them won it ?' that that has happened here—in fact, my only criticism of

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now let me see . . . which was he ? "

• From London arrives Basil Seal, whom it is perhaps kindest cative of the newer writers, and his future development will fo describe as amoral, to find out what is happening. Seth, be watched with the greatest hope.

liho knew him at Oxford, makes him his Minister of Moderni- Death to the French, an admirably direct bit of work, studies zation. Revolutions, a Birth Control Pageant, and every kind the character of the eternal British Tommy in action of -an bf intrigue follow. Most of the consequences are exceedingly unusual kind. Rifleman Dodd was cut off from his regiment funny ; a few are grim. Mr. Waugh's note deepens in this in Wellington's Army during the campaign of 1810 in Portugal.

• brilliant book. Black Mischief is amazingly well written, He fell in with a number of Portuguese irregulars, who treated and no one but Mr. Waugh could have written a single page of him kindly, and became their captain. Under his direction it. Even where, as occasionally, there are traces of the they harried the French for several months, and finally he influence of other writers—such as, possibly, Ronald Firbank himself succeeded in burning a dump of bridging material at

his own. sharp, swift sequence of incident, and in the development

• Peking Picnic is a study in perception. I do not mean that of Dodd's character. At first sight, there would not seem it has not a story, or that it lacks exciting incident : indeed, much to be said about this simple, likeable, and worthy man, the characters at one point are captured by bandits ; but its but the portrait is most convincingly filled in, and there is peculiar quality is summarized in the serene and clear per- not a line too many. lieptions of Laura Leroy, its most important character. Miss Stern's publishers have collected together in one Laura is the quiet and gracious wife of the Commercial and enormous but not unwieldy volume her three novels, Tents of Oriental Attaché to the British Legation in Peking : Israel, A Deputy was King, and Mosaic. The result is a Laura asked this question more of herself than of Lilah. In her difficult to think of any contemporary novelist with a creative experience all the richest and most valuable things were mixed vitality equal to Miss Stern's. The Matriarch, Berthe, the up, somehow or other, with being hurt. Sooner or later everything whole drove of Rakonitzes and Czelovars—they are a world

that was nice hurt as well : love-affairs hurt (like the devil) -

' in themselves, and we feel we know them all ; and now,-in Marriage hurt ; children hurt—she half shut her eyes at the thought Of children, as if to shut out Tim and Sarah and the intolerable this single volume, we can enter the world without trouble, pain of separation- from them. And directly from being hurt, when and where we please. it seemed to her, sprang all the qualities she valued most, in others The three young men who sailed out from Portree Harbou or in herself—courage ; a measure of insight, and self-knowledge ; and the secret sense of strength, of the indestructibility of the human one September afternoon aboard the Sylvia' had not the spirit in the face of disasters, which is the most' precious possession slightest idea of the tangle, by sea and land, in which they of all." were to be caught. Beyond mentioning St. Kilda, a second Such a passage as this, with the description of the view from and more sinister island in the Hebrides, rum- running, the temple, and the Buddhist ordination service, give the attempted murder, and Gillian's singularly unpleasant uncle, character and tone of the book, Which is maintained throughout I am not going to betray Kr. Blake's exciting plot. He com- every crisis of its story. The story is of a week-end picnic biases his thrills with a real love of the Western Islands and a at a temple. The hostess is a Mrs. Nevile, and the 'party pleasant sense of humour. Sea Tangle is no mere " holiday includes two English girls and an American one, a young reading," but an excellent story of adventure, to be read when man from the Legation, a Major, a French philanderer, and holidays are over, as a reminder that there may still be Anfe-isof Vitlitead from Tlfe' paity • -txeitement -in ma - everyday :W. orldy -

. , The work of Mr. John Brophy continues to deepen in sig-

ficance. Anthony Lynch, hero of The Rocky Road, is a

between Ireland and i the disunity in his heart, gives up his position, and goes to

Dublin, where his brother has just been hanged, and is ma, the Irish chapters are very good, and better Of course we haven't got any full details yet.' desire to give his work an artificial symmetry may interfere Seth.' Inflections 1931 is that it does not tell me any more about-its

sufficient to make him one of the most interesting and prove- Waugh's work remains sharply and unmistakably Santarem. The great merit of Mr. Forester's story lies in its

when they arrive : and it affects them, and their relationships

one with another and continues to affect them long after the