NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24814, 2 March 1946, Page 5

NEW NOVELS

THE NEW STEINBECK Cannery Row. By John Steinbeck. Heinemann. 136 pp. No doubt there were, or are, respectable. prosperous, right-thinking, church-going, right-voting citizens in the Californian fishing town Mr Steinbeck depicts here; but he is not concerned with them, except to give an occasional glimpse of the petty shames of their private lives and the grosser ‘ones of their public administration. His eye, fond, humorous, philosophic, is bent on the no-goods, the misfits, the idlers, the odd-men-out of the tumbledown quarter, and on such men of mark in this community as the smooth, shrewd, just Chinese storekeeper, Lee Chong, and - "Doc,” whose wisdom is charity and who runs the marine biological station. Mr Steinbeck's philosophy often fluffs into clouds of sentiment. through which he sees, less the simple fact that love and faith stay this abject little world, than visions too sublime to be reconciled with ugly reality at all. But if he sometimes makes readers snort with derision, it matters very little. Next minute, genuine pathos stabs them through; or they are, before a gale of comedy. HORNBLOWER The Commodore. By C. S. Forester. Angus and Robertson. 265 pp. This is the Australian issue of the latest of Mr Forester’s grand series of novels about Horatio Hornblower, one of Nelson’s captains. Here he is sent as Commodore of a small squadron to the Baltic, at the ticklish period when Napoleon’s continental plans were culminating and air depended on swinging the uncertain Emperor of Russia into resolute resistance. Hornblower triumphs again in action at sea, as a diplomat, and in the defence of the Dvina against Marshal Macdonald, commanding Napoleon’s vital left wing in the campaign of 1812. , The story is stirringly good and there are curious parallels, well suggested, between the issues and strategies of that day and those of 1941. THE WHITEOAKS The Building of Jalna. By Mazo de la Roche. Macmillan. 312 pp. This is the primal story in the "Jalna” series, the chronicle of the Whiteoak family. The imperious old lady Adeline here is the vivacious girl who married Philip Whiteoak, the Hussar captain, and emigrated with him to Canada. Jalna itself grows from the name of’the Indian garrison town where thfey met to the great house from which this chronicle has flowed. Augusta, Nicholas, and Ernest are born. (Every student of this history will gaze with wonder at Uncle Ernest squalling under Mr Pink’s baptismal ministration and at Uncle Nicholas sobbing in sympathy.) Miss de la Roche is as felicitously and vividly inventive in the leisurely course of this pioneer narrative as in all that has evolved from it MALGUDI The English Teacher. By R K. Narayan. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 184 pp. When each day’s news tends to form in a New Zealander’s mind a picture of India in which the masses and the masses only—to use the word in a -double sense—are significant, politically, economically, socially, and the significance, accordingly, is too heavy, too overwhelming for sensitive response, there is great corrective value in so different a picture as Mr Narayan’s. For continental India and for the immense tendencies in which its millions are swayed and impelled, he substitutes, in effect, a domestic interior, its more delicate colours, its subtle complex of human relations. The teacher is one who works in a mission college in Madras Province. Surrounded by his pupils and colleagues. he is a lonely man, missing amid the wrangle of their academic voices the music of his wife’s and his child’s. He leaves the life of the mission hostel to set up house with them, and is content —until Leela dies. From this point the story strays into a vague theme of spiritualistic consolation: out that declension leaves Mr Narayan’s previous achievement intact and admirable—that of a close and beautifully truthful view of Indian family relationship. The limits which confine it do not reduce its importance and are essential to its artistic integrity. MUSICAL GENIUS Starbuck. By John Selby. Hutchinson. 272 pp.. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. The career of Brant Starbuck, from childhood to the height of his brilliant success as a platform pianist; to the estrangement between him and his wife,’ partly due to his success, partly to his determination to serve in the war, partly to the hidden emotional conflict that warped his life; to the war-time accident that mangled his hand—and to the series of tricks with which Mr Selby resolves all the discords. Nothing is harder, as one attempt after another shows, than to bring musical genius to life in words; but if Mr Selby disappoints a few readers by failing in that, he will please hundreds with the dulcimers and cymbals of romance. PATIENCE, PRIM, AND ‘ PRU Three Young Maids of Lee. By Amy J. Baker. Hutchinson. 160 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. The year 1888, in* Lee Manor. Lee Village. North Devon; the three Misses Lee, Prudence, Patience, and Primrose, the oldest just 20. Miss Baker’s novel, very pleasantly written, traces the unpredictable turns of their lives, out of the serene, conventional course that seemed to lie open ... ? to the Paris stage, financial disaster, and a bravely maintained independence: to missionary service in China; to heartbreaking misfortune in love and the forgetfulness of insanity.