[In the following review, Cournos regrets that Collier has wasted his talents writing Full Circle.]

It will be remembered that in the last two pages of Penguin Island Anatole France furnishes us with a sketchy picture of the day when civilization will have run its course, and men, “barbarians” once more, will have begun to build a new civilization not so different from the old. John Collier takes up the theme in this his second novel and elaborates it in nearly three hundred pages. Only it is not France but England which is the author's focal point—England in 1995, a generation or two after it has been devastated by terrific wars and left a vast ruin inhabited by mutually hostile tribes indulging in atavistic adventures.

In a brief introduction [to Full Circle] Mr. Collier asserts that he has written a “tale” pure and simple and that there has been no intention on his part to supply any sociological interest, which, he supposes, is expected in novels dealing with the future. As a tale, then, his book is to be judged. Naturally one does not expect truth but an aspect of truth, which in a work of fiction might be called verisimilitude. Broadly speaking, one gets it, but not without some glaring faults in detail. The hero of the tale, Harry, rival of the chief of his tiny community and leader of a marauding party making an assault on a neighboring village to acquire the necessary supply of women, may legitimately grow lyrical about nature or the divine girl in yellow who gives zest to his adventure, but it is really questionable if, being the sort of man he is, in a community so primitive, he would be apt to show himself such an adept in elegant abstractions. Some of his speeches addressed to his bosom friend, Crab, sound very unreal indeed, though they would be unobjectionable enough if dissociated from their background.

Apart from the setting, Harry's problem is not so very different from our own; it belongs to human nature. Friendship, love, treachery, and all that sort of thing are involved.

He was caught in an abominable circle. At this point he observed, in a sort of stealthy flash (but did not heed much), that though all that hurt him lay inside the circle, what broke his spirit was the disparity between his life, inside, and the rest of the life, without.

Mr. Collier can write well; I find myself wishing he had applied his skill to a theme less full of pitfalls than this.