Parthian Shaft

GREY GRANITE--Lewis Grassic Gibbon --Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Last February Death came to Archeologist James Leslie Mitchell, at 34. A literary dual personality, Archeologist Mitchell was also Novelist Lewis Grassic Gibbon. An authority on Mayan civilization (The Conquest of the Maya TIME, Feb. 4), he had written a Scottish-dialect trilogy (previously published: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe) and another big novel (to be published in the U. S. next season). Grey Granite, Author Gibbon's posthumous Parthian shaft, was the concluding volume of his trilogy.

A Parthian shaft in more ways than one, Grey Granite closes the romantic story of Chris Colquohoun (pronounced "Gaboon") in a manner that may take its readers somewhat aback. After surviving the two husbands of the earlier books, Chris has gone with her grown-up son Ewan to the industrial town of Duncairn. There she spends her days in drudgery as partner in a boarding house, while Ewan starts work at an iron foundry. Written in the same earthy dialect as its predecessors, Grey Granite is peopled with no less salty characters, but the sign of the restless times lies heavier on it with every page. Ewan, a cool customer who cares for nothing and nobody but himself and his own affairs, finds himself forced into awareness of his fellow-workers. Before he realizes it he is emotionally involved in their plight, and a friendship with a socialistic young schoolmarm rouses his intellectual interest in the economic wherefores.

Ewan becomes an intellectual radical, but he fights shy of Communism until the police run him in and give him a taste of the third degree. He comes out of jail battered but unbowed, and believing coldly that force must fight force. A cooked goose in Duncairn, he goes from job to job, quarrels with his sweetheart when he finds that her socialism will not stand up against economic pressure, leaves home to go to London and fight for the Cause. Chris goes off to a cottage in the country to think life over.

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