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romantic into an acceptable, 
even sympathetic, character.

Of the British writers, the best 
work of the year has been turned
in by the younger writers just
reaching full maturity. Among 
these, Liam O’Flaherty is a writer
of an astonishing modern style and
power. He has been influenced by 
Synge and Joyce and probably the
Continent, as his work is out of the
English tradition. He is concerned
with the obsession of terror and 
flight. His “Mrs. Gilhooley” is
prodigious. It is more than a psychological 
study of a well-known
Irish type: it is alive, fused by the
rampant energy that blends imaginative 
and realistic detail into a 
narrative of such strength as to
suggest the possession of nothing
less than genius. The revelation
of character is a deep probing of
the dark places of the heart and 
mind.

A novel marking considerable
change of style is F. Brett Young’s
“Love is Enough,” a story of the
English countryside that will make
any Englishman homesick in far-
off places. With such a background 
he has traced, minutely,
the life of a gentlewoman from
birth to early Autumn. Mr.
Young’s chronicle of the passing of
three generations of two English
families is full of full-length portraits 
that are in the best tradition
of the English novel. The shorter 
novel of David Garnett’s “Go She
Must” has also the background of 
England’s garden vistas. He no
longer traffics with the fables of 
man and animals, but the note of
fantasy, with its varying imaginative 
implications, illuminates the 
adventures of this odd young 
woman living in a country vicarage. 
Another novel of the country
gentry is “Rowforest,” by Anthony
Pryde. It is a well balanced study
of the changing order. Against the
intruding new rich, the impoverished 
landed family, in this instance 
of Rowforest, in debt
through their elders, refused to
slip into graceful decay and abandon 
their ancestral home to upstarts. 
There is hearty blood to 
this family, and a real struggle is
made which is contrary to the conventional 
tale of the broken-down
nobleman. A novel of well-drawn
characters and carefully sustained 
interest.

The fiction of Mrs. Delafield has
recently shown a steady advance. 
In “Jill,” a post-war study of London, 
she has presented a most interesting 
group of people in sharp
contrast to each other. With dexterity 
she has commanded a divided 
interest in her characterization 
of a hard, sophisticated young
couple, made rotters by the war,
and of a young woman whose simplicity 
and native shrewdness mark
her as a child of nature. In “The
Allinghams,” May Sinclair has told 
of a family of children being inhibited 
by their old-fashioned parents. 
As a family of children they are
incredibly unlike each other and 
the victims of Freud rather than 
fate. Storm Jameson has turned
back to the time of wooden ships.
Her heroine in “The Lovely Ship”
becomes the dominant factor in a 
shipyard and is too strong a character 
to find any satisfaction in her
lovers. But feminism in “The
Lovely Ship” warps not only the
heart and mind of the heroine, but 
also the ending of the novel. The 
early years of clipper building are
picturesquely described.

The gift of Miss Warner’s “Mr.
Fortune’s Maggot” is a deft compression 
of method. With almost
as much topsy-turvy fantasy as 
Chesterton, in transmuting the 
commonplace into things fantastic,
she brings “Robinson Crusoe” up 
to date in about the same manner 
that Chesterton would reverse the

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