THE ORDEAL OF THE FALCON

This has more of James Hanley's Boy than it has of Larsson's own Our Daily Bread, which with all its realism has a quality almost of gentleness. Swedish Sten, working on the freighter Falcon, learns the way of a ship and the sea with men, from his lowliest of jobs. The personal problems of the men, the brutalities, cowardice, courage, philosophy, friendship and hates, all these gradually acquire some meaning, and Sten works out a pattern of life for himself and acquires a hero. A good sea yarn, of a ship and its men, realistic, hard-hitting, without the piled up horrors that kept Boy from reaching a wider public.