MY HEART AND MY FLESH. By Elizabeth Madox Roberts. The Viking Press New York, 1927, $2.50.

IT is a notable fact that three of the ablest living writers of English prose are women. Few are the men who can rival Willa Cather, Virginia Wolf, and Elizabeth Madox Roberts; their work possesses a calmness, a surety, a technical excellence which places them above the crowd and which has earned for them a certain claim to timelessness. Each succeeding volume from their pens is received as a permanent addition-to English fiction and not, as is the deserved fate of so many other novelists, as merely and annual product, to be read, discussed, and immediately forgotten.

Miss Roberts' entrance into this choice and enviable group was effected by a single novel, published last season- "The Time Of Man." Before that offering she was known, if at all, as a poet of much worth and greater promise; due to it she became recognized as a novelist definitely arrived. Her second story, "My Heart And My Flesh," will therefore only enhance an already established reputation. It is an extremely creditable enhancement, however, and will suffer, and then slightly, only when compared with its predecessor. It fulfils the promise of "The Time Of Man" much more successfully than Miss Kennedy's "Red Sky At Morning" fulfils the splendor of "The Constant Nymph."

"My Heart And My Flesh" has as its scene a Kentucky village. Its characters are the inhabitants of that village-people of strange ancestries, of dark longings. The central figure, more acted upon than acting, is one Theodosia Bell, born of a lustful father and a pallid mother. Briefly, the story deals with her girlhood; it develops her being, shows her as a neurotic, pitifully inadequate to face life alone and yet deprived of every supporting hand. It traces her relations with her father's illegitimate children-three mulattos of varying degrees of insanity. It follows Theodosia herself through an awful period of mania. And in the end it leaves her in a pastoral security, safe enough but nevertheless forever marked by the fearful experiences through which she has passed.

Miss Roberts, having spent her literary apprenticeship in poetry, is forever bringing recurring poetic rhythms to her prose. The result is not, fortunately, that strange thing called "Iyricprose"; it is very beautiful and its melody is very simple, although the reader must be aware that an enormous complexity has given rise to this simplicity. Miss Roberts' medium is effective; her mastery over it demonstrates the possibility of a good poet being a good novelist. And "My Heart And My Flesh" is quite worthy of the author's standard-which is no mean degree of praise. R. T. S.