Evening star., 1939-04-02

their own belief that they are i'm
mensely interesting and charming,
they manage to impose acceptance
of their legend on their long suffer-
ing friends. Mr.. Marquand's claim
is that they really are lovable-in
spite of their dubious honesty. their
self worship and their assorted
neuroses. And he is persuasive
enough to make the claim stick
between book covers. The reviewer
however, if she saw the Brills NOV
ing in next door, would throw up
high -barbed wire electric fence on
the instant.
The book is written with indi-
viduality and honesty. It's fault is
that it is too long. is often repe-
titious and on occasion produces
platitudes as profound gems OF
thought. 1t would seem, on the
whole, to be the sort of work which
upper middle class people will read
with a comfortable conviction that
1t is literature.
The next book is James Boyd's
Bitter Creek" 1t is a nice little
thing, which depends for its merit
on the characterization of eccen-
tries; it has in its pages. that is to
say, a patent medicine vender. a
COW camp cook who is philosopher,
an old trapper and a Piegan In
dian. These and others are draWr
in with vivacity and charm, and
that it is a good thing. too, for
there is little substance in the book
beyond them.
The story is of boy who runs
away from his home in the East
and goes out into the frontier West
some time in the 70s. Various good
people have befriended him in his
escape from home, and various bad
ones have injured him. Eventually all
these characters assemble on Bitter
Creek and the drama is played out
there. There is something of the
clarity and simple romance of Owen
Wister's "Virginian" in the pictures
of the old West, and that is about
all one can say lot II.
Story of the Next War.
Ordeal" is a story of the next
war, and of what will happen to
the average young Englishmen and
his family when the bombers ny
over England's towns. These grim
prophecies are made in terms OF
the experience of one Peter COrbett,
solicitor, who has a nice little home
nice little wife and three nice little
children when war breaks out. Peter
feels the impulse to enlist to help
save his country, and, in any past
war, we are told, would have done
SO at once, but, in the modern armed
conflict, he dareS not volunteer be.
cause to do so would be to aban-
don his family, who are in the
direct line of fire-thanks to the
perfection of the fighting plane.
So Peter stays behind, and cholera
breaks out, as does typhoid, and
there is complete destruction OF
the utilities and bad breakdown
in anti-craft defenses. At last, how
ever, Mrs Corbett and the young
sters are shipped off to Canada and
Peter goes in to do his bit in mud
ding through. It is Mr.. Shutes
opinion that that will be the course
pursued by most young men with
families when and if that war does
finally get here.
The Rising" starts out well. 1t
is a novel on the attempted Irish
rebellion of 1867 and it begins nicely
We are shown the misery of the
peasants and their hatred of their
landlords; we are shown the land
lords, too, and made to understand
their inability to do anything o1
an ameliorating nature. Then the
hero enters, one Wolfe Darragh, and
the book goes all to pieces almost
on the spot. For Miss Johnston
does what so many lady novelists
do when they write of strong, silent
slightly sinister males-she falls in
love with her own creation. And
from that point on Wolfe becomes
increasingly tender and noble. We
leave him at the end charging the
enemy's cannon single-handed, In
order that the girl he loves may
escape with the boy who loves her.
One gathers rather that he was,
eventually, a casualty.
The last book is one of those i'm
mense, detailed, laborious historical
novels-"Guns of Burgoyne," by
Bruce Lancaster. It is the story
of the Hessian mercenaries from the
time of their kidnapping and sale
to the English, up to the end OF
the revolution. It shows vast
amount of research and has a per-
fectly acceptable plot. The reviewer
is willing to believe that it is quite
accurate. That, again, Is really all
that she can say.