NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25609, 25 September 1948, Page 3

NEW NOVELS

LACKLAND’S PROGRESS Three Ways to Mecca. By Edwin Corle. Jonathan Cape. 303 pp. V(hy did Oliver Walling want to wear a dog suit? . . . That is one of the things cleared up in the end by John Lackland, when he first met Oliver again, years after their meeting m Paris and talking and travelling together and parting. He also tidied up Oliver’s business with the Hollvsharps • who meant to give him the thin end of the deal over the film rights in one of his novels; he tidied up the much-married Countess’s perplexity, whettier to go in next for Dr. Erdmann and psychiatry or for Bishop Bayless and the swami and the Silent Sanctuary . . . John had no right to be there in California, tidying up, because when Oliver had met him in Paris he had been resolved, after completing his philosophical book, to fulfil it by committing suicide, punctually to time and place . . . But he had tidied up philosophy and life, meanwhile, by marrying Christina, whom \ hey had met in Paris, with Albert, Albert Pyle, lecturer in vertebrate anatomy at Johns Hopkins, and very precisely and correctly her intended husband. John Lackland’s progress as a tidier is notable. His success in crackpot California is assured and amusing. But much the most amusing pages in Mr Corle’s novel are those that record the conversations and encounters of Oliver, John, and Christina in Paris. They are delectable. And they are many. CESARE The Borgia Testament. By Nigel Balclnn. Collms. 25b pp. Mr Balchin plunges the reader back into the Italy of tne Renaissance and up to the neck in the systematic abominations of the Borgias. The story is set forth as .Cesare Borgia’s—“by his own hand from the Castle of St. Angelo in the city of Rome, anno 15U4, the first year of Pope Julius”; and the inscription is followed by a capitalised “Quid est veritas?’’ systematic crime; and at the last, defeat and disillusion

. . . What’s it all about, and tor? Mr Balchin makes Cesare les 1 * a lover oi crime for its own sake, less the artist and sensationalist, than the comprehensive schemer for power, who used what methods would serve, or pro-, mised to serve; lor the dream of a new Roman empire, in which material sway and the sway of the Churcn should be one, vanished as hl's hand was palsied over the last moves. This is to make Cesare, perhaps, both more and less than he was; but readers who have the appetite for endless variations on the linked themes of pride and depravity will not care about tne little more or less,' or even be astonished to find Alexander VI a milder monster than Gibbon depicted. i LIFE IN OLD SPAIN Catalina. By W. Somerset Maugham. Heinemann, 256 pp. “So, with Catalina as it began, ends this strange, almost incrediDle, but edifying narrative.” So, with a smile on his face as he began, ends this strange, wayward, but immensely capable Somerset Maugham. The crippled girl, Catalina, is told by the Virgin Mary in a vision that she can be restored to health by one oi the three sons of Juan Suarez de Valero—the one who has best served God. Now this Juan Suarez had three son, one a great prelate, the. second a great soldier, the third a mere baker; and a pretty business Mr Maugham makes of Catalina’s progress through the hands of bishop and captain, unblessed with the power to heal, to the miracle-working baker’s. Well, we’ve had that, and our big Inquisition scene. What do we do with Catalina now? Pack her off with the vagabond actors; let their encounter with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza be hers; let her see life in old Spain; make a celebrity of her, at last, in Madrid. So it is. The story never settles to mood or purpose, standard or texture. Her * Mr Maugham exerts himself to do his brilliant best; there he shows how yell he can carry it off without exerting himself at all. He may be said to have pleased himself; it is certainly to be said that he will please many more. TWO IN ONE Men at High Table and The House of Strangers. By Gerald Bullett. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. -224 pp. The two long tales or short novels which appear together in this book exhibit Mr Bullett’s talent at its height. In the* first, a group of Cambridge dons-, entertaining a war-time guest, a Chinese scholar, pursue in their talk a theme that war ever insisted on, with the crash of a bomb, with the delivery of a telegram; that their learning circled about; that their guest’s race had reflected, on for centuries — the theme of life and death, the dreams that mingle their bounds, the ghosts that pass them. The talk brings up strange incidents, experiences and recollections, that lift the mystery into sight, turn it about, let the light fall this way and that, and penetrate shadow to find shadow. That is the background for the few episodes of the story and its epilogue.. It is all beautifully done. In the second story a writer wants to assemble the material for a biography—of a girl whose death swiftly followed her publishing some exceedingly good poetry. The information has to be drawn from her family —father, aunt, and husband; the title points to the irony with which Mr Bullett describes the search, among them, for the truth about Sorrel Harley.

INJUN COUNTRY The Wild Yazoo. By John Myers Myers. Macdonald and Co. Ltd. Through Oswald Sealy (N.Z.) Ltd. The Gilded Rooster. By Richard Emery Roberts. T. Werner Laurie Ltd. 281 PPThese are two good strong cups of tea, Indian (U.S.) brand. Mr Myers launches his incredibly named Virginian hero, Mordaunt Fitzmaurice Godolphin, after escapades which belied all this syllabic gentility, into the Upper Yazoo territory of the west. Here he learns that escapades are one thing, pioneering among wild beasts, in human shape or furred, quite ano'ther. How M.F.G. won his way and his wife and Council Lodge makes a really stirring story. Mr Roberts stages his story in Wyoming—in a frontier fort of the Injun country proper, mid-century. The Sioux have the garrison boxed; the safety of all depends on the half-breed scout, Jed Cooper, the “Gilded Rooster.’’ And inside the fort there is a tense situation, for the commander and the scout are rivals for the love of Corinna Gunne; and Jed will be the winner, or the Major and the rest can be scalped. Mr Roberts works this out to the right answer, by methods which will suit everybody who likes rough justice. OLD LADY Wonderful Mrs Marriott. By Josephine Bell. Longmans Green and Co. 294 pp. Everybody knows somebody like old Mrs Marriott —tenacious, managing, wilful, yielding neither to life nor age nor ... the medical profession. As for German bombers, fiddlesticks! Miss Bell’s modelling of this character is quietly just, fairly balanced between sympathy and severity. . The courage, the grip, t’ e pride; the vanity that dresses old bones, the disastrous delusion of knowing what is best for everybody, the pathetic, obstinate folly of running from doctor to quack for a remedy against death—all are here; and Miss Bell, as always, is never more skilful than in’ the consulting room. CONDUCTED TOUR Rubberneck. By Kem Bennett. Arthur Barker Ltd. 222 p' Mr Bennett needs only the most trifling plot to carry his amusing story of Orlando Braithwaite’s career, with his party of 10 American tourists (Miss Pawtucket. Mr Jomelli. and the rest, as hap oily assorted in personality as in name), on the Continent. It leads