FICTION: Dusty Answer

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The Significance. Not often does a first novel carry a weight of emotion that makes so fussy a critic as famed Alfred Noyes say: "It is the kind of novel that might have been written by Keats. . . ." The untruth of this statement is valuable as an indication of the flustered enthusiasm this book has caused, will cause in multitudes of unstable and sentimental readers. Yet it would be unfair to hint that the sentimentality of Dusty Answer is a false emotion. Though it may be an exaggerated one, its exaggeration is a sincere illusion, not a self-conscious parade of intensity. Moreover Author Lehmann writes with a sensitive and fine precision, she betrays in herself an exquisite perception of subtleties in her characters—most marked when she is writing about children. Readers may well suppose that Author Lehmann wisely creates out of her own experiences. Like Judith Earle she has come early to an artist's isolation, her past has already made the "one great circle." Then to the question "What next?" her book is the answer—dusty like an insect's wings with a curious bright bloom of sudden wisdom and golden wonder. The Author. Author Lehmann is the daughter of English R. C. Lehmann, famed oarsman, noted writer, member of the staff of Punch; she is a cousin of Owen Davis, famed U. S. playwright. Bred in Bourne End, England, she studied at Cambridge, published one poem in a magazine, then this book.