Changeling And Other Stories — Donn Byrne

As reviewed in The Literary Digest International Book Review - Vol. 2, Nov., 1924.DONN BYRNE'S stories all touch the fundamental emotions understandingly and with a deft hand. In Changeling, and Other Stories he is a knight-errant of literature with the soul of a Celtic troubadour. His outstanding quality is his power of creating atmosphere, of investing with reality the illusions of imaginative sentiment. He can reach one's sympathies with a tale of tender love, whether it be that of a bourgeois Irishman in The Belfasters or of the gorgeous Queen of Sheba in Wisdom Buildeth Her House, with its implied balancing of heartwisdom against head-knowledge. In Praise of Lady Margaret Kyteler is particularly beautiful in its portrayal of a woman's struggle between deep affection and loyalty to the old servants, the dogs and the trees of her ancestral home. In Delilah, Now It Was Dusk, Samson and Delilah are depicted from the Philistine view-point, and live before us with human affections and weaknesses. The author is equally successful in Irish, a tale of action centering in a prize-fight, or in Reynardine, a story of mental conflict on the mystical. For his scenes Donn Byrne ranges over wide fields. The reader is led from biblical episodes, ingeniously related with cleverly nterwoven scriptural utterances, to South America, modern New York, or the South Seas. He is as diverse in subject-matter as in locale, tho love in some aspect is usually his theme. Two or three tales are touched with the supernatural. Some of these stories are reminiscent of other familiar authors. The Parliament at Thebes reminds one of Kipling's Jungle Books, and is inferior to them. This and The Changeling are the least satisfactory in the volume. The Changeling shows plainly a striving to be sensationally dramatic, with exaggerated expression converting eternal verities into mere clap-trap. Moreover, any lawyer would immediately recognize its legal impossibility, its departures from statute and procedure.Mr. Byrne's style is glowing and vivid. He is gifted with aptness of phrase and richness of allusion. He is colorful in his painting of the past, with the panoplied pomp and varied trappings of the Orient. He is equally good in his descriptions of more familiar environments. While the stories are of uneven merit, as a whole this book should entertain most readers and charm many.