NEW FICTION

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26727, 10 May 1952, Page 3

NEW FICTION

?R ™ E , PATH OF THUNDER (Faber. ’ PP.) is a violent and sentimental novel about race-relations in South nca by a Negro writer, Peter Abrahams, author of a novel of the Great Trek, Wild Conquest." One's main impression, after reading this new novel is of the great bitterness and natred that now animate the feelings of the educated negro who thinks only of the humiliations and cruelties innicted on him by the white man in e past, and nothing of the kindnesses and opportunities offered. The story cJroT a col ° ured naan, educated in vinXJ own - who returns to his native h vo g -tT the u Karr °o- He falls in love with a white girl, daughter of lS Ca u hlte , “ baa s”; and in the end the white baas murders him, as once before he had nearly murdered (but only succeeded in cruelly disfiguring) a coloured man who dared to love another woman from The Big House on the Hill. This novel brings more heat than light to bear on the saa tangle of race-relation in South Africa.

J H ?no FIFTEEN STREETS (Macdonald. 223 pp.) by Catherine Cookson, whose first novel. “Kate Hannigan, gave a vivid picture of Tyneside life, also has its setting in the slums near the docks of East Jarrow. It describes the home life of a workingclass family, in which the father and one of the sons are violent men given to drink and quarrelling. The struggle between good and evil in the family reaches tragic proportions—although there is more than an element of melodrama. A faith healer who comes into the area to help, a Catholic priest, and a pretty young schoolteacher who is a daughter of a shipowner, add variety to the group of well-conceived characters indigenous to the Fifteen Streets.

THE NEW RICH (Sampson Low. 280 pp.), by Naomi Royde Smith, is an excellent novel concerned with one of the problems arising out of the Welfare State: What is to become of elderly men and women of the upper classes who still have incomes large enough to provide them with the means to live the sort of lives to which they are accustomed but are deprived of the houses, the domestic service and the food they are too old to do without? The elderly and elegant heroine of this novel, unable to settle down into hotel or boarding house life, seems to find a solution when she joins a household of similarly placed persons who pool their money so that they can live in conditions of some luxury and refinement. But the lady’s standard of good manners, her belief in ‘‘the duty of non-interference; the obligation to put the best, the most innocent construction on things overheard, or things seen by chance, even when to do so might involve connivance in sin,” lead her into terrible situations in this combined household. The novel moves quietly, by stages as gentle as the manners of its heroine, into the most sinister and violent denouement. A very feminine and original book, this novel can be commended for its humour, authentic dialogue and competently handled narrative.

THE RELUCTANT DICTATOR (Werner Laurie. 223 pp.), by Brian Glanville, is a gatirical tale of a British Association Football star who accepts the offer of a South American country to play for its national team at a temptingly high salary. Shortly after his arrival he finds that he has been invited in order to distract the people’s attention from the political situation. When the rebellion against the current dictator does break out, the footballer finds himself nominated as successor. His grotesque adventures and final escape to England produce a farce that is cleverly sustained and never comes too near—or strays too far from—reality. The atmosphere of Pandemonia recalls Freedonia, of which Groucho Marx was once the dictator.

THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 220 pp.) by Neil Bell is a rather ponderous novel, written in the first person, about a schoolteacher who sees two generations of young men absorbed into two wars. With monotonous regularity, "the Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away," as he loses his brother, his brother-in-law, and all his favourite pupils. Since none of the characters comes to life at all vividly, the reader is moved to no more than a melancholy sigh. APRIL MORNING (Sampson Low. 220 pp.) by Barbara Fawcett concerns the dilemma of a young girl who must choose between the scholarship she has won to Oxford and the care of her father who is seriously ill. Choosing the latter course, she takes over the running of her father’s business in the little country town where she lives, and finds, not bitterness and frustration, but interesting activity and finally romance. Equally conventional, romantic, and designed for feminine readers who like their problems to have happy endings is HAPPY EVER AFTER? (Sampson Low. 235 pp.) by the same author. It opens with an ever so lovely wedding, which is followed by the development of “marital problems.” He is jealous, she has her career as a film-star; his business is unsuccessful, hers is a triumph. Nevertheless, they struggle through to a contentment which their creator apparently thinks is permanent.

END OF THE ROAD (Sampson Low. 297 pp.) by Monica Ewer deals with an egocentric portrait-painter and his family who are swamped by their father's personality. They all drift on their aimless way through life, until father unexpectedly inherits a house in the country. Here they discover that what they have all needed for a long time was “roots,” and they proceed to sink them, happiness and a sense of “values’’ being restored on all sides. One cannot help noticing that the “back to nature” theme is having an increasing vogue in the popular novel. THE INESCAPABLE WILDERNESS (Museum Press. 255 pp.) by Kenneth Austin Dobson, presents us with a crowded story of love affairs and "olitical crises in an East African town. The protagonists are nurses, doctors, missionaries, District and Provincial Commissioners and their wives, and assorted native characters. A vivid impression is conveyed of the complications of political life in contemporary Africa, and the study of native aspirations for independence is sane and authentic.

Sylvia Sark is the author of THE SEEKING HEART (Rich and Cowan. 212 pp.), a neatly contrived popular novel in which the eternal triangle is resolved by its transformation into a four-cornered figure. The setting is Kenya, with coffee-plantations, a rhinoceros (who plays a vital role) and other local colour providing the requisite suggestion of authenticity. GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER (Duckworth. 325 pp.) by Charles Kennaway is a vigorous novel about a young Scot born at Hogmanay in the year 1700 in the town of Auchterarder. Perthshire. He was involved in the ’l5 and the ’45 and, between the two, fought with the French at Dettingen and Fontenoy. There is no lack of action in the novel. Yet it is not just an adventure story, for the author, though himself a soldier, was as scrupulous as any scholar in building up the background ta his books. Through his research into old documents and family papers, he has made this novel an authentic record of eighteenthcentury Scottish life, communicating both its turbulence and its tranquil pleasures, and providing many authentic portraits of some of the great commanders of the times. George W. Ogden's CUSTODIAN OF GHOSTS (Hale. 254 pp.) is an American ghost-mystery. The setting is a deserted military post. A new captain comes to take charge, thinking to regain his health. He meets the sort of adventure that always befalls characters in thrillers who are rash enough to think of a quiet holiday His investigation into the ghosts that have dri-en'his predecessors at Hermosa to suicide leads him into present romance and the uncovering of past tragedies. There is a dramatic ending, but the reader is left Unsatisfied because the author is content to leave part of bis story unexplained, settling for a vague, psychic explanation of some of the hauntings.