BRIEFER MENTION
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The Camomile, by Catherine Carswell (12mo, 319 pages; Harcourt, Brace: $1.90) is a story of maidenly revolt, which doesn't exactly send one into transports of enthusiasm, particularly since the revolt is only a milk-and-water affair at best. The camomile—"the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows"—survives the rubber heel of oppression almost too well, expending itself in schoolgirl rapture. The novel is a series of letters which one would enjoy if one knew their author, and might even read to one's friends—if other means of entertainment were lacking.
Where Your Treasure Is, by John Hastings Turner (12mo, 313 pages; Scribner: $1.75) presents, in second-hand garments of "realism," a ludicrous, improbable, and entirely undesirable romantic conception: a Madonna-woman who returns to two middle-aged husbands the ecstatic passion they once felt for their brides. Middle age is rarely thought worth writing about; and it is a pity that a book like this should be circulated and give an added impression of dulness to an interesting subject.
The Promised Isle, by Laurids Bruun (12mo, 243 pages; Knopf: $2) is social criticism of socialism, carried on under the picturesque guise of South Sea romance. It seeks to recapture the adroit ironic flavour of Van Zanten's Happy Days, an earlier translation from the same source, but its success is only approximate. Characters called Jakob Beer and Daniel Hooch may be good vaudeville, but they become flat the moment they are uncorked. In the classic phrase of the Old Soak, satire such as this "don't gurgle none when you pour it out of the bottle."
Sea Wrack, by Vere Hutchinson (12mo, 300 pages; Century: $1.75). If winter comes can spring be far behind? Not with our scribblers, certainly. Here is a book fresh from England bearing all the earmarks of the work by that other Hutchinson of best-seller glory: the same breathless, jerky style, the same asthmatic dialogue, the same knack for discountenancing the inevitable, the same truth-dodging talent. What might have been a genuinely tragic tale is sidetracked into the baldest melodrama.
Tutors' Lane, by Wilmarth Lewis (12mo, 164 pages; Knopf: $1.75) is a delightful sketch of love and manners in a small college town. It is a first book—and how pleasant to find a young author who does not have to write about himself! Tutors' Lane is shrewd, kindly, and amusing. That light touch, the absence of which among Americans is so frequently deplored by our continentalized compatriots, seems born in Wilmarth Lewis.
The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman, by Stephen McKenna (12mo, 288 pages; Doran: $2) is keyed in a mood deftly satirical, with ample insight and urbanity of temper. Thus, though its psychology is keen and uncompromising, enough detachment has gone into the writing to relieve the narrative of any tincture of the unchivalrous sneer. Given the materials, it would be impossible for a craftsman of Mr McKenna's talents not to have evolved the kind of novel he did; he has not stopped there, however, and the result 1s an added measure of excellence.
