NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25306, 4 October 1947, Page 7

NEW NOVELS

GIBBS Sir Philip Gibbs’s hero, in The Hopeful Heart (Hutchinson. 272 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd.), is his portrait of the common man lifted above himself by the hope of a new order and faith in it and the resolve to work for it . . . and again and again cast down by his failure to movqL the host of common men with him, even to hold the sympathy of his family and the love of his wife. She twice, and very cruelly, deserts him; he is regarded as an eccentric by the Tv.ry members of his family and as a fool in a half-way house by its Leftwing rebel; the electors to whom he appeals; though they applaud his writing—it seems a pity Sir Philip had to make a journalist of him—refuse him their votes. Defeat, defeat, defeat: *

“I see no light ahead,” said Frank, with a deep groan. “It’s in your heart,” said Faith. “Don’t let it go out. Keep it burning—the light of your compassion, your sense of pity, your hope!” This is a novel of the times . . . with a message. The wording may be a -bit maudlin, but it’s honestly addressed to the millions of Frank Allinghams. TRIANGLE With a skill that is not easy to praise without resorting to superlatives Mr Morchard Bishop lifts out of the commonplace the story which, in The Song and the Silence (Gollancz. 206 pp.), he founds on commonplace materials—the affair in which Squadron Leader Drexel, commanding a small R.A.F. station, involves himself with a W.A.A.F. She is a charming, unsophisticated girl; {ie, much her senior, is impelled towards her by a love the honesty of which is defined in his gentle, devotiohal character, and its hunger in the alien character of his wife, narrow, shallow, fiercely, restlessly possessive. The end is the commonplace one of a revolver shot—but it is not the end; for it is followed by an account of Drexel’s struggle to save himself from the gallows, a struggle in which the last and saddest truth about him is told. Pdt in the mouth of one Lawson, who knows these three better than they know themselves and becomes curiously, credibly distinct himself, the narrative assumes those qualities which blend in dramatic inevitability. LONDON, THEN

Miss Nelle M. Scanlan’s latest story. Kit Carmichael (Robert Hale Ltd. and Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. 293 pp.), is one that her friendly readers will find less ambitious than she has often given them, but not at all disappointingly slight. Pre-war in period, its picture of London, then, though highly selective, is nostalgically serene, well ordered, and gay. Miss Scanlan has composed no group of characters more happily, or indeed more truthfully, than those who here make up the Highgate Hill family party, from the elegant trifler, Kit, whose self-vindication is neatly contrived, td that sage philosopher, the much-married aunt. EXODUS

Biblical students will not be the only readers to turn with interest to Thomas Mann’s The Tables of the Law (Seeker and Warburg. 124 pp.). in which the greatest of ‘modern German writers gives the Book of Exodus the form of a short novel. It is not a mere paraphrase and elaboration; far from it. It is a reinterpretation, scholarly as well as imaginative, the primary principle of which is to offer natural and material explanations of what in the Scriptural story of Moses is otherwise accounted for. Much here will puzzle gnd annoy fundamentalists; but readers more detached will, while they admire much in Mann’s characterisation and philosophical approach, chiefly be offended by what is clearly a very left-handed translation. CHELSEA PIE

Mr Dennis Parry is a writer of abounding energy and wit. and his Mooncalf (Robert Hale. 253 pp.) is kept alive by them; but the Chelsea company of aesthetic dabblers and amoralists into which he plunges the lumbering, amiable Andy of the title, before the war, is not really significant enough to be worth post-war satire. Andy’s search for something to believe in succeeded, though sadly. TRANSATLANTIC

England, America, and England again are the scenes of the three parts of Miss D. A. Ponsonby’s Sophy Valen.tine (Hutchinson. 284 pp. ‘‘Throqgh Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.), a highlycoloured period novel, early eighteenth century. Elegant and raffish strata of society in Bath; the emigration of the lovers, Sophy and Tony, to America; tough times there, and their separation; and their reuniting in England—within this outline there is packed an abundance of exciting incident and emotional folderol.

unfruitful comparisons which too often bedevil our appraisals, and to count the positive gain. And the gain to New Zealand, in the imaginative coherence of its life may be greater than is confidently to be asserted at present. More than any other New Zealand poet, Mr Fairbum has value for what he is, as much as for what he writes. WJiat has counted has been his unfailing assertion of a creative point of view, and a more consistent one than his appetite for many kinds of writing and modes of expression might suggest. Fresh Air In New Zealand the example of a poet who leaves the door of his imagination wide open—even to the men from Porlock and the winds that scatter his papers—has perhaps been uniquely valuable. It is not for all to follow, and a time for the example of seclusion ond concentration may come—if it has not come already. Mr Fairburn’s door has been open from the start. His apprenticeship- included Rugby football, tournament golf, and a Byronic delight in sea swimming. (I recall nearly drowning nffyself off Piha beach, trying to prove myself as strong a swimmer.) His painting is more than a hobby. His audiences here, at Maruia Springs. Dunedin, and Invercargill, will see a man some inches more than six feet tall, wearing his 43 years as lightly as 21, a poet quite as large as life. For completeness it can be added that apart from his occupations of poet, critic, and occasional pamphleteer, and (with the least imaginable egotism)' that of being Fairburn, he has worked as a Farmers’ Union assistant secretary, farming magazine editor, and radio script writer and latterly has been busv with hand-printed fabrics. How, and why, he has taken to these employments is a story to be filled in when the time comes, if ever it does, for Lives of New Zealand poets; for of all the forms to which Mr Fairburn might be expected to turn, autobiography seems one of the least likely.