This Month's New Reading

Book Reviews:

(Conducted by the Assistant Editor)

Prelude to Red China

THE writings of Lin Yutang—the Chinese scholar who has taken it upon himself, in recent years, to interpret China for the Americans and the Americans for China —do not please everyone. But if the general reader survives the curiously stilted character of the first chapter of his new novel, The Vermilion Gate, he will find the rest of the story of absorbing in- For lack of knowledge of the style of Chinese novelists on their native heath, one could, perhaps, say that, in the beginning, the book is writ ten in the American idiom on the Chinese pattern—and the effect is certainly gauche. But later, when Lin Yutang relaxes and gets into his stride, so does the reader.

The story is set in China of the early 30’s—following the “Mukden Incident” when Japan was con solidating her conquests in the Manchurian provinces and when Chinese soldiers were being driven south of the Great Wall.

The early action of the story takes place in the ancient but mod ernised city of Si-an, in China’s N-W, where Jo-an, a college girl of wealthy and influential family, meets Li Fei, a newspaper corre spondent.

They fall in love but before they can marry Li Fei leaves hurriedly —with an infuriated War Lord at his heels —to cover the war against the Moslems who make up the greater percentage of the popula tion in Sinkiang (Chinese Turkes tan), that most western area of China which is flanked by Tibet and the USSR.

Like a lot of other people, Li Fei finds that it is easier to get into Turkestan than get out, and he spends as much time trying to pre serve nis life as writing newspaper copy. Meantime Jo-an has her own troubles when she discovers that she is to have a child.

The story is written against a background of what to the Euro pean is always fascinating: the Chinese facility for blending realism with ingrained family tradition.

And the 30’s were probably one of the most interesting periods of modern China—if for no other reason than tnat it was then that the foundations of the present “Red” phase were laid.

Some “educated” Chinese were then embracing Western ideas — from permanent waves to cement highways; but there was still room for the poetic scholar and the con vinced loyalist, even though it were in a remote lamasery. And, of

course, the despotic war-lord whose whim was law in the small area of his influence.

One naturally wonders whether this ingrained “Chinese-ness” of this great nation can have been very much altered under the Red regime. And for this thought alone, the book is worth its price.

A novel by a Chinese, about Chinese, but certainly written for Westerners. (Published by William Heinemann, Ltd.

Australian price, 18/9.)

Thriller with Trimmings

According to the jacket.

Carter Dickson is one of the “Big Five Detective Story writers.” It does not say who the other four are.

I bow to the blurb-writers; and presume that Carter Dickson is an acquired taste. If you like your thrillers doodled up with a lot of extraneous flim-flam, then Dickson is your man.

This newest story ( The Cavalier’s Cup ) concerns Chief-Inspector Masters, his rival detector, Sir Henry Merrivale, and the latter’s Watson, an incredible Italian- American (or vice versa) who is ostensibly a maestro of the music.

There are also representatives of the aristocracy in young Lord Brace and his American wife and their nine-years-old son; Lady Brace’s father, a rabid Isolationist; sundry butlers, crook and otherwise; and a female Labour politician of some pulchritude. And there is a lot of schemozzle about the Cavalier’s cup.

Unlike most writers of thrillers, there is a fair amount of bedroom innuendo in Mr. Dicksons work.

You may think that this improves it. (Published by Heinemann. Australian price, 13/3.)

It's Love Again

SOMEWHAT in the Georgette Heyer tradition is this latest novel of Magdalen King-Hall ( The Venetian Bride) , set in 18th century Ireland with interludes in Paris and Venice.

It is a romantic story of a man’s love for two women and his even greater love for his land. The story has considerably more earthiness than the Heyer stories of the same period.

Those were the days when ladies of high birth and fashion were expected to take lovers, as gentle men took mistresses; but when marrying outside one’s social caste was a permanent blot.

Young Ned Gascoigne inherited

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(Continued from Page 76) a title, estates and many debts from his dissolute father and acquired his Venetian bride and her dowry in unusual fashion.

He took her back to live on the grim western coast of Ireland and there the final chapter is worked out when a hurricane, the like of which had never been experienced before or since, drove the sand dunes before it and obliterated the house and estates of his beloved Fantry.

The hurricane incident is based on a catastrophe which actually happened in 1694, on the west coast of Scotland.

A happy-ending story for those who like their reading to be dis tinctly under middle-weight. (Published by Peter Davies, Ltd. Aus tralian price, 15/6.)