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A God's-Eye view of a village. This book is unique in English literature both in conception and treatment. The author presents a whole community to the reader, taking for his subject our largest social unit--an English village--where everybody knows everything about every one. He has taken a typical village during one day of the war and given a camera obscura presentment of the multitudinous intrigues, ambitions, desires, disputes, relationships, and interests which thread its fabric so closely. There is no hero or heroine, for the author presents some hundreds of characters, each all important to himself. These speak their own thoughts, throw startling sidelights on their neighbours; and from the whole, a picture of a village community takes definite shape. The author has snapped his village at one instant on one day, so that there is no 'action.' The village is frozen motionless whilst the reader inspects each inhabitant. There is no sentimentalism, no 'kailyard' gloss; the villagers expressing themselves with immense force from the Earl to the mole-catcher. Mr Gilbert has done intensely for the English countryside what Balzac did for his nation on a great scale. Not only is each of the great array of characters set forth vividly, but the larger problems of the countryside are illuminated from various angles. A map of the village shows every cottage, some fifty genealogical trees explain the relationships of the villagers, and a 'Who's Who' gives full information about each inhabitant. The author has taken three years to write this book, and it is the fruit of a life-time's close observation. All who were born in the country or have any interest in rural life and problems must be interested in _Old England_.
Dr Irvine has already secured a very high place in the affections of the people of this country through his books, _My Lady of the Chimney Corner_ and _The Souls of Poor Folk_. _The Carpenter and His Kingdom_, as the name denotes, is a Life of Christ, a re-interpretation of His life as seen by a very simple yet very subtle, very human yet very wise idealist and Christian. No writer on social tendencies after the war has failed to point out the great loss of prestige suffered by the Churches. Speaking broadly, they are regarded with a disinterested tolerance almost amounting to contempt by the great majority of people, and this attitude has as its general effect a marked decrease in 'belief' in Christianity. Dr Irvine's book may prove a very real antidote to that progressive agnosticism, for he still believes that the Life of Christ is the greatest example mankind has ever been given, and that the influence of His message is vastly greater than that of any other single influence in history. But to show that he has to draw a new picture of Christ emphasising His Humanity as well as His Divinity, and make His teaching intelligible to a Society still hardly approaching convalescence after a prolonged and virulent disease. It is an original, beautiful, and timely book.