The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1922-09-10
FIVE NIGHTS AT THE FIVE PINES. BY
Avery Gaul. The Century Company.

M RS. GAuL has that rarest and most
wi valuable quality Of novelist, a
definitely original personality.
which gives an individual life to her work.
This is a first novel, but she has written
many short stories and there is nothing
amateurish about her. There is, however,
a little awkwardness. possibly due to mex
perience, chiefly in the Introductory chap
tiers, wherein her attack" is not rapid or
little too much description, and the atten-
ton of the modernly rapid running reader
one has noted that slight defect all the rest
that remains to be said may be honestly
admiring. There is a poignancy and sim
cerity in the emotion of the book that is
often tear starting-not with any thin SEN
timentality, but with the true dignity OF
the untranslateable lachrymde rerum.
The scene is laid on Cape Cod. on thin
tongue of sand running out into the ocean,
There is an old house, which is as justin
ably haunted as any house ever could De,
and the people of the tale are strange
lot. though there is no travesty, no cheap
dressing up about them. Mrs. Gaui has an
oddly engaging trick of bringing IN, Ior the
moment queer people, who really nave Ut
lie or nothing to do with the story, but do
belong there as part of the whole, some-
thing as a cow properly belongs in the
the old Judge; the keeper of the inn, VINO
is interested in stamps and resents lntru-
sion; there is the town crier, who never
makes an ineligible announcement ana
whose outbreaks have all the perunehcy
of a remark by MIR. F.'s Aunt. There i
the pond lily man." who drifts across the
narrative merely to shout pond lilies!
All of these are well worth meeting. One
will not forget them.
The center of the story, however, is poor
old Matte who occupies the strange house
which the narrator wishes to buy. Matte
is one of the most deeply moving figures In
current fiction; a wronged, unhappy, mis-
understood. strange old woman with q
tragic history. who was fully entitled TO
"hauntn the old house. It will not do. how
ever. to tell too much of the plot, which IS
very well carried out and is very definitely
out of the commonplace. The idea is not
wholly novel, but the treatment of it is en-
tirely original. unconventional at every
point and wholly successful.
The sea also is a character in the book;
IT is there, in all it's moods as live thing
as any of the queer, quiet people VINO
dwell on its margin.
The story is also unusually successful IN
its handling of psychic things. There is
even a psychic cat. As to cats, the late
captain had left the proceeds of his entire
estate TO found a home for stray animals,
especially cats"-thus leaving poor Matte
uncared for; a bit of irony, too. as 1t was
Matte who had first directed his attention
to the abandoned cats. to her own ultimate
djsinheritance "She used to take 'em in
when the summer people went away and
left 'em on the beach. Wild like they get.
and dangerous. She had taught him TO
notice them"
The story makes strong appeal In the
fneness of its manner and in its origin
atty, as we'll as in its emotional power.
Mrs Gaul may still have something to
learn of the mechanism of the novel, but
this story is good enough to give her a
very high rank at the outset