NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26491, 4 August 1951, Page 3

NEW NOVELS

The Broken Root By Arturo Barea. Translated from the Spanish by Usa Barea. Faber; 320 pp.

This is less a novel than the political testament of a liberal returning to Franco Spain after a long exile. In the members of his family who had remained in Spain he finas the evidence of the degradation which the dictatorship brought to the people of his country. His wife has sought refuge in spiritualism and in a very crude form of self-deception, his daughter is a religious maniac and an informs; one son has become a racketeer, and the other a Communist dupe. They are associated with people equally unbalanced or unpleasant, and more still come into the story as it progresses. Grafting officials, bigoted priests, cheating business people, jackal-like hangers-on, parade through the book, only lightly relieved by a few people trying hard to hang- on to some shred of decency. Their efforts to preserve their integrity are shown to be largely futile in the corruption that surrounds them. A neatly evolved ending resolves the perplexities of the exiled visitor who is allowed to return to England and to comparative sanity. Few indictments of dictatorship can equal this book for its Power and also for good writing. A Last Sheaf. By Denton Welch. John Lehmann. 239 pp.

Denton Welch died in 1948 at the age of 31 as a result of the serious accident which had happened to him 13 years earlier. Readers of “A Voice Through a Cloud.” the moving account of his illness, will snatch at these last gleanings from his writings with melancholy eagerness. Always a sensitive and gifted man both as painter and writer, Welch rose almost to genius under the physical and .spiritual torment of his constant suffering. He ®anaged to write two novels and a “°ok of short stories, as well as the autobiographical narrative, before he •tied, all of them miraculous feats of endurance in the circumstances. Now comes this posthumous co'lection of ®ort stories and sketches, a novel fragment, some poems and nine of his Paintings. It shows not only the range « his gifts but the rare precision of style and the delicacy of his perception. His account of afternoon tea *iffi the artist Sickert is typical; this • life in its essential quality caught and held as it went by. Relentless yet; •rinpathetic. We’ch brings before thej reaaer the whole of Sickert’s charac-] •er with its cruelty, gaiety and eccen- 1 ‘rjpity. merely by describing in his observant way the little incidents and undercurrents of the afternoon One can hardly believe, after reading it, ■®at the whole sketch has only occupied six nages. The rest of the book “ equally bri’linnt; Welch never lets cue reader down. It is impossible to

do him justice in a short notice. The importance of his work does not depend on the sad appeal of his personal history; it stands on its own.

Joy Street. By Frances Parkinson Keyes. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 512 pp.

After an interval of little over a year, Frances Parkinson Keyes has produced another monumental novel to delight her many enthusiasts. She always chooses as settings for her books places that have great romantic and “snob” - interest for her American public. In “Dinner at Antoine’s” it was old New Orleans; this time, it is Boston’s famous Beacon Hill. With her unerring sense for what her public wants to read, she divines that a novel about Boston must demonstrate that the old exclusive aristocratic families are learning (though not without their bitter struggles) to mix with the lower elements on the other side of the Hill. Her hero and heroine come from the right side of the hill, but their ambition is to unite in amity the old New England traditions with the virtues of Boston’s hitherto socially rejected Jews, Irish and Italians. Needless to say, Frances Parkinson Keyes makes a good story out of it, even if she idealises her lesser breeds and caricatures her old families. As usual, she packs in plenty of solid detail: at one minute the reader may find himself learning how to grow cranberries, at the next discover he is being informed on antique Russian jewellery, and every time a dinnerparty is held (which is often, as in the other novels) he will certainly be told what the characters had to eat As usual too, there is plenty of solid moral; when Frances Parkinson Keyes writes her little passage about the beauties of constancy in marriage, one cannot resist the feeling that there should be soft organ music playing somewhere in the background. Nevertheless, when all has been said, she deserves her wide reputation as a popular novelist.

Homeward Borne. By Ruth Chatterton. Austra’aaian Publishing Company. 324 pp. Besides befog a distinguisHed fllmactress, Miss Chatterton has directed plays and acted in them; she has also translated plays from the French. This is her first novel and, although it develops along lines the modern novel-reader has come to know well, it is a very competent piece of work. Its heroine is an almost incredibly noble, loving and tolerant woman who owes something to the all too beautiful characters who star in American "soap-operas.’’ While her husband is away in the American Anmy of Occupation in Germany, she decides—without consulting her husband—to adopt a little German Jewish refugee. When he turns out to be a chain-smoking eleven-year-

old with not a word of English, she is not daunted, but starts the work of redeeming him with sweet womanly patience. She is sustained and fortified by the memory of Jake, her first love, also a Jew, whom she feels she failed; little Jan is a substitute for Jake. Trouble starts when the husband returns from Germany. We are given to understand that he never was much of a character —just an ordinary American “extrovert,” good at sport. But now he has become verv pro-German and antiJewish. Divorce follows; the wife goes off with little Jan and that other really nice man who has been waiting all along. One is meant to feel full of shocked indignation at the behaviour Of the husband with his regrettably low intelligence and nasty prejudice, but sympathy for the poor creature keeps creeping in. Undoubtedly this novel will have many readers in snite of its defects; and those who admire it will be pleased to know that it is being made into a film.

The Dry Season. By Dan Wickenden. Dent 433 pp.

Here is another novel by the author of “Tobias Brandywine” and “Walk Like a Mortal.” Although Dan Wickenden’s characters are all very much Americans, his novels are widely read in England. He is good at handling grouns of people. This time it is a group of Americans living, or holidaying, is Guatemala: there are young and old. married and single skilfully interrelated. The novel is quiet in tone, but grows in subtietv as it proceeds. The rather extravagant beauty of the local scene and. the character of the natives—both Tn ’ian and Spanish -provide an unusual background that adds to the charm of the book.