Good Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

KANGAROO--D. H. Lawrence--Seltzer ($2.00). Kangaroo seems to be the best novel Mr. Lawrence has written since The Rainbow. There are interesting human beings in it, the prose is often of extraordinary beauty, the ferocious preoccupation with sex that disfigured Women in Love is much less in evidence. The story is that of Richard Somers, poet and essayist, who went to Australia with his wife because he had made up his mind that Europe, after the War, was played out, done for, and he wished to find out what new spirit or spiritual impulse might be abroad in the new countries. Australia terrified and fascinated him by turns--he got drawn into local politics and met the extraordinary Kangaroo, a plump, Semitic, would-be Messiah, who dreamed and plotted for an Australia as democratic and brotherly as the early Christian Church, bound together by the universal love of every man for his fellows. The mental struggle between Kangaroo and Somers was intense; in spite of Kangaroo's force Somers would not be converted. He, too, loved Australia, but not in Kankaroo's way--and when Kangaroo died after receiving several bullets in his marsupial pouch in the course of a riot, he felt it was time for him to go away. So the end of the book finds Somers starting for America with little decided except the knowledge of what he believes alive in Richard Somers' mind.

THE CONQUERED--Naomi Mitchison--;Harcourt ($2.00). Meromic, " The Pride of-the Venetii," young Prince of Ancient Gaul, came to manhood just at the time of Caesar's conquest. His tribe crushed, his father killed, his sister driven to suicide, he was sold as a slave and sent to Rome. He was rescued from torture by Titus Barrus, young Roman aristocrat and Lieutenant of Caesar. A friendship as strange as it was deep grew up between them, its bonds so strong that it even forced Meromic to fight against his countrymen during the last campaign against Vercingetorix. But at last the claims of his people proved too strong for him; he went back to them (too late for victory) and, after breathless adventures that lost him his right hand, returned to Rome, a freeman, thinking to live with Titus the rest of his days. He did not, because--but we must not spoil the ending!