n of the ultra-realists that everything that has ever
happened is equally important in retrospect. The narrator, _Vanya
Gombarov_, a Russian Jew, discourses reflectively and detachedly, as it
were from behind a mask, to an English artist friend about his early
childhood in his own land and the dismal adventures of the _Gombarov_
family in that underworld of exploited and miserable aliens which is one of
the root social problems of America. Very poignantly Mr. JOHN COURNOS makes
you understand the import of the phrase so constantly on the lips of such
victims of their own credulous hopes of El Dorado--"Woe to COLUMBUS!" The
portrait of _Vanya's_ stepfather, brilliant, magnanimous, pursued by an
AEschylean malignity of destiny, fills much of the foreground and is a quite
masterly piece of work. One cannot be wrong in assuming this to be
essential autobiography; there is a passionate conviction as of things
intimately seen and dreadfully suffered. Such material might well have
tempted to a mere piling of squalor upon squalor. A fine discretion has
given a noble dignity to a record through which shines the unquenchable
human spirit. One passage, full of affectionate discernment about London,
will cause a flicker of just pride in everyone who is authentic Cockney,
whether by birth or adoption. A big book of its kind, I dare assert.

* * * * *

_Star of India_ (CASSELL) is what Mrs. ALICE PERRIN calls her latest novel,
a title so good that I can only wonder why (or perhaps whether) it has not
been used before. Inside also I found excellent entertainment. One supposes
the author to have been confronted with two main problems with regard to
her plot--how to make sufficiently plausible the marriage between a flapper
(if you will forgive the odious word) of seventeen and a middle-ageing
Anglo-Indian; and, secondly, how to impart any touch of novelty to the
inevitable catastrophe that must attend this union. The first she has
managed by a very cunning suggestion of the mingled jealousy, curiosity and
boredom that drove _Stella_ into the arms of her elderly suitor; the second
by a variety of devices, to indicate which would be to give away the whole
intrigue--one, I may say, whose climax is not nearly so visible from afar
as that of most triangle tales. One point only I will reveal: Mrs. PERRIN
has had the courage, while vindicating her own common-sense judgment upon
such folk, to introduce a second gi