Book

Color

Edited by HARRY HANSEN

Nella Larsen's "Quicksand"

QUICKSAND, by Nella Larsen; Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50.

This book makes you want to read everything that Nella Larsen will ever write. It is neither distinguished nor excellent and it is not "a modern masterpiece" but it wakes you up, it makes you aware that there are other races besides the white race. You see the great space between black and white, the elaborate mental barrier, and in the same moment you are conscious of the reason for it and the inhumanity of it. The book is objective enough to keep you from speculating about its author and wondering if she is like Helga Crane, Danish and colored, but you feel the deepest part of her in the character and you give to it your deepest.

The jacket states that the heroine is not confronted by the problems of a class or a race but that she is so confronted by race, in her dividedness, in her swinging between the Negro and the white, that her one problem is to transcend race. Helga has no real home on this earth, though