23 APRIL 1932, Page 28

LOVERS ARE NEVER LOSERS. By Jean Giono. (Jar- rolds. 7s.

6d.)—A good dish spoiled in the cooking—or the re-cooking. There is beauty in the characters of the farm-labourer Albin and old Amedee ; there is strength . in the story of the girl whose parents hid her in a silo after the disgrace of her time at Marseilles ; but it has been sadly handicapped by the false " poetic " dialect into • which the story is rendered. When will sophisticated writers learn that, to describe things in a countryman's tongue, they must first enter into his mind ?