Soil

JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN-H. W. Freeman-Holt ($2.50).

So compelling are a hundred-odd pages of Joseph and His Brethren that the reader, enthusiastic, mouths them "strong," "fundamental," and "in the best tradition of English novels of the soil." But when the farmland seasons begin inevitably to recur, and the simple rustics inevitably to repeat themselves, that same reader, despondent, flutters the pages and lights upon the publisher's explanation that the work was originally planned as a short story, and later expanded to its 372 pages. Obviously ill adapted to short story, the theme of nature's dogged hold upon the lives of men is here drawn out in excessive monotone.

By dint of his five sons' persistent labors, Benjamin masters a wretched twitch-sown farm, only to deed it away to the boys' flighty stepmother. This village wench marries, after Benjamin's death, a footless tippler who turns the five brothers out and lets the farm go to ruin. In years past four of the brothers had tried to escape the farm, two for Canada, one for the glamorous army, and another to marry his Jessie, but the soil lured them back. Exiled now, their only thought was to return, and at the first opportunity they bought up their old farm though it was wretched and twitch-sown again.

Inarticulate devotion to the Suffolk fields, Author Freeman records with insight and fidelity.