SOME NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22437, 25 June 1938, Page 18

SOME NEW NOVELS

YOUNG SELF Lions and Shadows. By Christopher Isherwood. The Hogarth Press, 312 pp. Christopher Isherwood must now be 35; in “Lions and Shadows’ he has recaptured, as the g9ies, hi- youth and cleansed his bosom of some stuff that lay there heavily, his fatal adaptability, his tireless sense of guilt, his sense of-fadure in life’s tests, his proneness to echo his- friends, and, not so much stressed, his peevish failures. It is no a fresh record, for many young men with more than average intelligence have felt and thought as he, but most of them see through themselves sooner, and go to work tnore sure of their own characters. The n.,ost considerable quality of this dramatised autobiography is the display of the post-war young man who felt inferior because he was toe young to fight. At. school, a mild rebel, a lazy, able boy, Isherwood was inspired’to work by an amusing, stimulating master, won a scholarship, went to Cambridge, was much too much _ mipressed and absorbed hy one friend, lived in a dream world, had himseii sent down by writing absurd answers in an examination, began cultivated another strange friend, wandered from lodgings to the seaside, to his home, to a tutoring job, h„d his first (and very poor) novel published, decided to be a doctor, fa'led, and went to' Germany; and there ends “Lions and Shadows. li is possible to write portentously of this young man’s dreams and reveries and cryptic intercourse with his self-centred, brilliant friends; but it is not worth while, for his case is commoner than he knows. Only with the writing of this book, perhaps not even yet, has he rid himself of a sense of the overwhelming importance of his own consciousness. The diary of an intr overt is, in small doses, interesting. This one is drawn out, and the flashes of buffoonery, wit, and-curi-ous observation are not quite frequent enough to brighten it all. The story is worth persisting with, however, for the last third is all interesting, adult indeed, and the least ix.trospective part of the book. Young men will be young men, whether they languish with Oscar, ci in Sinister Street, or live in Mortmere with a Spanish watcher Mr Isherwood’s plays, written in collaboration with W. H. Auden, show that his mind and character are now firm and sure, at least in Auden’s company. “Lions and Shadows 1 ’ is probably catharsis; but readers will wish that the penance was less protracted. MISS COMPTON BURNETT ? Fool’s Melody. Anonymous. Robert Hale. 490 pp. (8/6 net.) Through Whilcombe and Tombs Ltd. “Because of its outstanding excellence the publishers believe there will be considerable speculation as to the authorship of this novel.” The publishers’ belief is right, and this reviewer’s speculations turn to Miss Compton Burnett as a part, but not whole, begetter. Miss Compton Burnett is in dialogue, satire, and penetration, the Jane Austen of our days and one of the best half-dozen living novelists. The dialogue, the consistency of character, and the detachment of “Fool’s Melody” are excellent, and the satire is not so bitter as in “Brothers and Sisters” or “A House and its Head,” Miss Compton Burnett’s best-known novels; but there is still ample ruthlessness, evil has a good run for its money, and happiness is not indiscriminately awarded. Nevertheless the softening of some characters and the ultimate defeat of the powers of darkness suggest that another mind than Miss Compton Burnett’s planned the lives of the strange people who danced to the “Fool’s Melody.” Though this attribution may be quite wrong, there is much to justify it. The Fool is a musician, in a doctor’s home for mental treatment. He is one of God’s Fools, innocently wise, naturally understanding, and, to his associates, astonishingly and accidentally competent in setting evil, wrong things right. The chief evil thing is a doctor who has betrayed the daughter of the house where the Fool lives. This wicked man procures the commitment of the Fool to restraint; but he perishes through the Fool’s understanding and his own conscience. Other characters are young people who have lost control of themselves and lost the sympathy of those whose affection they need. One is a magnificently selfish and wise old woman. There are'several children described with almost brutal detachment. There are violent episodes

treated as coolly as the remarkable characters; but this detachment the novelist is not felt to be main, tained by hard effort; it is the calm, ness of the creator who knows what he is creating, and refuses to spoil his work by the emphasis of excessive pity or explanation. “FooTh Melody” is not everybody’s novel; some will recoil from its coldness; but it leaves a memory of the power of human passions, and the folly of judging men and women always by words and actions. A good navts, psychological with none of the ap> paratus of “the psychological novel* LODGING HOUSE In These Quiet Streets. By Robot Westerby. Arthur Barker 144. 292 pp. Through White ombe ao( >■ Tombs Ltd. J Mr Westerby’s new novel is another of those which link the lives of cleverly chosen types by some association of place. He chooses a cheap, dingy lodging-house. Here he groups his actors —the woman who owns the house, Mrs Emms; the young writer, Nick, who must do “funny pieces . . . those facetious domestic comedy sketches . . . when his heart was in the Real Stuff, when he had a real feeling about life”; Mr Grin, a medium who fakes his seances arid longs to produce genuine phenomena; Frank, a lurking crock; Philip, an underpaid office clerk, - , whose hopes are pinned to'the win- • ning of a . football pool; Jimmy, whose hands are magical on lie piano, but whose dreary business is in a warehouse full of shirts; Gw®, who has no work on the films, but rehearses what she will say whet Mr Goldblatt rings to ask her In play lead.... There is nothing new in this arrangement of seam and human material What mate it impressive—sharp, distinct, sig- 1 nificant—is that Mr Westerby has ' what poor Nick only thinks he has—“a real feeling about life.”. OUT OF GERMANY A Traveller Came By. By Hfe Carson. Hodder and Stongldaa. 352 pp. (8/6 net.) From W- S. Smart. This is a highly dramatic story with a great many emotional complications, all of which arise tram terrible events in Germany. Though Michael Reader, for example, k married to the charming Elspetlv there is a dark cloud over them; and its explanation appears in the disclosure that, when Michael was in Germany, he fell in love with a • girl called Lexa, whose lover, a Jew, > was killed by Nazis as they were - trying to get out of Germany. He men who killed him were her own brothers. Lexa then committed suicide; and it was a heart tom by these fearful events that Michad brought to Elspeth. The situation is given another twist by the arrival in England of Lexa’s brother, Helmy, a disillusioned fugitive from the regime he had helped to build, and still another by the murder—another Nazi murder —of the man Michael’s sister Pauline loved. The knotting of the plot could hardy be more elaborate or more painful; but Miss' Carson makes the story read plausibly well. It completes the series begun in “Crooked Crtatf* and continued in “The Prisoner”; but it stands by itself. CONDUCTED PARTY . . ! Disorderly Caravan. By Josephs* Eamm, George G. Harrap mi Co. Ltd. 249 pp. Mrs Kamm’s story is lightly turned through amusing episodes and some serious ones a conclusion in which the single deep problem is happily resolved. That is the problem of young Nicholas Pierce and Janet Holmes, who feu in love during a Hellenic tour on which he was acting as guide and interpreter. The party being suitably equipped with man-catching women, | susceptible husbands, troubled ; wives, and busy gossips, Nicholas had sufficient problems as a diplomat without this supreme one of his own, which arose from the regrettable fact that Janet was married. Mrs Kamm makes very good entertainment of the bothered Nicholas’s occupation in smoothing out every difficulty but the one that touches himself; but she will not give any reader much doubt about her ultimate intention. And die brings that off as neatly as she (to* everything else. Longmans, Green and Co. tew issued a half-crown reprint of Barbara Hall’s novel; Dear Enconnttt, . a fine study of the disastrous conflict which the Great War set up in* young German of noble family, between his patriotism and his friend* ship" in England, where he had be® educated.