Fiction
Come Again. By Sarah Campion. (Peter Davies. 9s. 6d.) A Chorus Ending. By Ernest Raymond. (Cassell. tn. 6d.)
_My Heart Shall Not Fear. By Josephine Lawrence. (Heinemann.
ti os. 6d.)
The Iron Gates. By Douglas Scott. (Routledge. los. 6d.) '
The Bidou Inheritance. By Edith de Born. (Chapman and Hall.
Jos. 6d.) Come Again is a light, shrewd, amusing tale of antipodean types and manners in the outback of tropical Queensland from the early ,part of this century onwards. A ghost township, a handful of whites _ and aboriginals, hens scratching in the bush, ordeal by drought and tam, a half-caste young woman of temperament and a rogue butler In Sydney—it is a slight affair, rather less " written " than some of Miss Campion's earlier novels, but done with the sardonic and slangy humour that she discovers in all good Australians. As with so many apparently "true life' stories, this is on the formless side.
Mr. Ernest Raymond is always competent and agreeable, and -here is "a nice long read" in his most practised vein. Don't be 'put off by the thought of a Chalk Farm boarding-house—such places. Conceal, or barely conceal, sagas of passion. A clever young man rtChalk Farm found the coy, elderly Miss Piers the repository, as were, of an empty life, a life untouched by love. He should have nown better. It was purely for love that an inoffensive, studious Mlle man had committed shocking murder with an aim some 30 years before. Sound enough story-telling at one remove from life, though the illusion is not assisted by-"Mr. Raymond's double- exposure method.
My Heart Shall Not Fear is American, entertaining, a little dewy
rith moral uplift and even more of what is called—rather rudely, fear—a woman's book than the other two. All about the affairs of visitors to a maternity hospital—babies, food, rising prices, husbands and wives. "Light, observant, now and then . touching.
The Iron Gates gives a harsh and sombre picture of the routine of prison life and administration in this country today. I don't know how balanced the picture is—I suspect it of one-sidedness— but, however unfairly at times the problem may be stated, the pity of it all is there. This is a first novel, whose dramatic effects are not heightened by rather strained narrative devices or by a slightly oracular note of misanthropy. But it is sincere and affecting.
Lastly, The Bidou Inheritance, which comes nearest to what is called a work of art. A--short and spare novel, set in the Mauriac country around Bordeaux, about a hard-headed, tight-fisted peasant- shopkeeper who reads Montaigne and his preternaturally clear- hearted daughter. Not quite as alive as it should be, flawed here and there by a wish to explain, but beautifully cool in manner.
R. D. CHARQUES.
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