+ − Ath p273 Ag 27 ’20 140w
“Embedded in Mr Money’s book of anecdotes there are an extraordinarily large number of really delightful stories; but the book on the whole suffers, as do most books of good stories, in being too long.”
+ − Spec 125:153 Jl 31 ’20 500w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p453 Jl 15 ’20 490w
MONKHOUSE, ALLAN NOBLE. True love. *$2 (2c) Holt
20–13704
A psychological novel with special emphasis on the psychologic reactions of the war on its characters. Geoffrey Arden is an introspective journalist and playwright in love with Sibyl Drew, an actress. The war finds him on neutral ground and his comprehensive view leaves small room for narrow enthusiasm. Nevertheless the patriotic appeal wins out and he enlists. On proposing to Sibyl he finds that her stage name covers a German ancestry and that she is German to the core. They make a compact to be “chivalrous enemies” and lovers at the same time and in this lies the gist of the story: that to intellectually honest, well meaning people the war has presented two phases—the one the international human aspect, the other the national and patriotic.
“Mr Monkhouse is a professional novelist, quietly confident, carefully ironical, and choosing always, at a crisis, to underrate the seriousness of the situation rather than to stress it unduly. Admirable as this temper undoubtedly is, it nevertheless leaves the reader a great deal cooler than he would wish.” K. M.
+ Ath p1259 N 28 ’19 800w
“‘True love’ adheres to a course as conventional as its title, unrelieved by plot invention and unredeemed by emotional significance.”