by P. J. Searles
"Lost Horizon" by Hilton.
Weird stories are so often bloody and gruesome that it is a delight
to find one written in an urbane and restrained style. "Lost Horizon"
tells of the stealing of a plane and its four passengers (two British
consular agents, an American absconding banker, and an American
missionary) during a tribal outbreak north of India and their
intentional removal to a remote valley in Tibet where they find a
semi-Christian and semi-Buddhist monastery, inhabited by a group of
serene men and women who have achieved an indefinitely prolonged life.
The main portion of the story concerns life in the monastery and
the attempt by its head to persuade the few prisoners to remain
there, exchanging a hurried, confused, and short life in so-called
civilization for calm, peace, and longevity in Tibet. Naturally, and
inevitably, the denouement is a tragedy, indirect, but poignant.
Mr. Hilton is an urbane satirist (if that is not a contradiction of
terms) who has produced a beautiful story, weird and unusual, but
without the so-frequent accompaniment of vampires, ghosts, or the like.
He writes delicately in a style reminiscent of Owens' "The Wind that
Tramps the World." "Lost Horizon" is not for the blood-and-thunder
reader; it has no "crashing suns," no "supernatural," no "unseen
presences," no incredible "brain surgeons," no "werewolves," but it
does have an unusual plot, weird in a faint and beautiful manner. For
the not-too-hardened it will be a pleasure.
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