Evening star., 1934-09-09
In the World of Books
VIEWS AND REVIEWS.

DUSK AT THE GROVE. BY Samuel
Rogers. Boston: Little, Brown
g. Co.
~ AMUEL ROGERS, author of this
Atlantic prize novel, is a ma
tive of Rhode Island, the scene
~ of his story, the son of an Epis-
copal clergyman, a graduate of
Brown University and is now an as
sociate professor in French contem-
porary literature at the University of
Wisconsin. The two former novels to
be awarded the Atlantic prize are
"Jalna," by Mazo de Ia Roche, and
"Peking Picnic" by Ann Bridge. AS
an achievement in realistic fiction,
Dusk at the Grove" deserves place
between the two others.
From June, 1909, through Septem-
ber, 1881, the lives of Mark Waring,
rector of church in North Chester,
Pa, his wife Luly and their three
children, Brad, Linda and Dicky, are
followed during their Summers at the
Grove, the Rhode Island home in
herited by Mrs. Waring from her
grandfather. In June, 1909, when the
family are on the train for Rhode
Island, Mark Waring has just ac-
cepted his conviction that he will re-
main all his life at North Chester, that
larger churches in need of rector
will pass him by, as they have done
in the past. Luly, in her seat oppo-
site him, reads his thoughts and in
her own is already making the best
of North Chester. The children, with
Brad's friend, Thorton Ellis, are in
the dining car excitedly making Sc
lections from the menu for the dollar
table d'hote luncheon. Brad's other
friend, Joel, will be coming to the
Grove in a few days. Here, with the
exception of Ellen, who is waiting
somewhere to be Dicky's bane, and
young Pat not yet born, are all the
persons who come into narrative
limited in surface space but extending
far down below the surface of OBJ
servable events.
In 1909, the pattern of the life Of
the older Warnings is fixed; those of
the children are still to be traced. A
clairvoyant might wish that their
lives might be held suspended indef1-
nitely in childhood, for. as Mark War
ing later said bitterly to his wife: Il
think perhaps the best thing would
be to have your children die young,
and then you'd always have happy
memories of them" Certainly Linda's
matchless little boy, Pat, ought always
to remain a child, never to undergo
the deteriorating changes of adult
hood. 1t is painful to see the manly
Brad accepting an uncongenial road
to success, to see the imaginative,
temperamental Linda marrying the
wrong man, most of all to see piquant,
red-haired, blue-eyed Dicky wrecked
by a mad wife and the whisky bottle.
It is painful because it is so close to
realities. All the Warnings and Thorn
ton and Joel and little Pat are real
people. Thornton, Unconditional, al
ways considerate and gentleman, a
bore to erratic, unconventional people,
would have made an ideal husband
for the right woman and had the bad
luck not to find her. Joel is the least
convincing of them all, yet we suspect
he is the authors hero. He must
have charm and originality and some
significance, because Brad and Linda
and Dicky all think SO, but we do not
get that impression. Mr.. Rogers has
done a fine piece of analytical fiction,
showing profound insight into human
emotion, and the Atlantic prize
judges have made good choice.
FOUR GENERATIONS. BY Naomi
Jacob. New York: The Macmillan
Co.
THE four generations of the Jewish
Gollantz family, dealers in anti