The Best Books

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

THE WORLD IN FALSEFACE -- George Jean Nathan -- Knopf. Mr. Nathan is a conscientious professional iconoclast. He continues to knock down his favorite idols and to scatter the ruins. His victims range from the more eminent of modern dramatists to the more generally accepted of modern doctrines. His endorsements are few. They include Hauptmann, Flo Ziegfeld, Eugene O'Neill, the younger Guitry, George M. Cohan.

PERADVENTURE -- Robert Kerble -- Putnam. Our hero starts for the church, but gets lost on the way in the thickets of theology. After an interminable succession of spiritual mishaps, he ends up satisfactorily enough in the arms of a woman and in the pleasant meadows of her paganism. On the way he is so busy wondering about the meaning of life that he can give very little time to living it.

CHALLENGE -- V. Sackville-West-- Doran. Whole governments are deftly juggled to form a pseudohistorical background. The drama of Eve, whose passion is masked by her frivolity; of Julian, her cousin, whose cause she betrays for love of him; of Kato, middle-aged and stalwart woman who dominates him, is played against a glowing kaleidoscope of political intrigue in the Greek islands.

His CHILDREN'S CHILDREN -- Arthur Train--Scribner's. Old Peter Kayne was a Wall Street pirate. His son Rufus acquired a social veneer over his inadequacies. The third generation consists of three daughters, each of whom meets catastrophe. The last thing to fall is the Kayne fortune. Whatever the accuracy of its depressing picture of modern society, the novel is interesting and often extremely penetrating.

MYSTERY AT GENEVA--Rose Macauley--Boni. Twenty years from now the League of Nations assembles, at Geneva. A plot for kidnapping the delegates one by one is conceived by a group of assorted super-criminals. The reason for their dislike of the League is obscure, in as much as it is depicted as a majestically futile assemblage. The story brandishes first the dagger of mystery and then the scalpel of satire. Both are equally keen, and the result is a complete conquest of the reader.

HOMELY LILLA -- Robert Herrick-- Harcourt. Lilla is even more stupid than homely. As she grows up she gradually discovers that, despite her plainness, she has a considerable power over men. She marries an amiable school principal, is completely unhappy with him in a dull, acquiescing sort of way, and then leaves him. She finally finds a degree of happiness with another man. The book is a painstaking and outspoken examination of her problems.