NEW FICTION

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27368, 5 June 1954, Page 3

NEW FICTION

The Young Elizabeth. By Jennette and Francis Letton. Robert Hale.

“The Ybung Elizabeth” was a successful play. Its authors, determined apparently to squeeze the orange to the last drop, have now produced “the book of the play.” Artistically at any rate this seems ill-advised. A play is one thing, a novel another, and stage dialogue, even if good, strung together with bits of description does not make a novel. On the stage a historical drama has the help of costume and setting in building up atmosphere. A historical novel must rely on the author’s power of description and his knowledge of history. It is not sufficient to throw an “odds boddikins” or “by my faith” here and there and hope for the best. Certainly the play that is wrapped up in all this produces a picture of Elizabeth I that is at least memorable if not perhaps quite authentic, and of Mary Tudor that is dramatic though probably unfair. Several Tudor gentlemen are also present, who probably looked fine in the original production. Against Whom? By Phyllis Bottome. Faber.

In her latest novel, “Against Whom?” Phyllis Bottome poses her characters in a setting similar to that of her earlier book, ‘Private World,” but this time the scene is laid in a sanatorium instead of a mental hospital. Four of her main characters, Elizabeth, Conrad, John and Marie Celeste, are all individuals with problems, the result of internal rather than external conflicts, which are embittering their lives and their relationship with one another. The underlying theme of the book is that the solution of all such problems inevitably lies in a spiritual regeneration and practice of perfect love in the wider sense of the term. The forces of love and self-love struggling for domination are exemplified in the persons of two of the patients, a mystic priest and a selfish young girl. Such a novel needs a well constructed plot and well maintained tension if it’ is not to become a homily, and in prodding such a plot the author is remarkably successful. John, the Can dian doctor, never quite comes to life, but the sketch of the self-centred, neurotic girl Caroline is superbly done. The Cross and the Eagle. By Julius Berstl. Hodder and Stoughton. 319 pp. Mr Berstl has already written one successful novel about the life of St. Paul—The Tentmaker—which covered the Apostle’s early years. The present volume is not consecutive to the earlier book but it is complementary to it. It takes up the narrative at the last phase of Paul’s career, his part in the struggle between Christianity and the Roman Empire that reached its height in the persecutions Of Nero. The author has a vivid sense of what is due to his subject and handles his theme with depth and with dignity. He has a vivid sense of period and conveys with a lively imagination the struggle between the impassioned Christians and the Empire. But Paul dominates the book and the man of the epistles is clearly visible. Some of the other familiar gospel figures seem a little shadowy beside him, but that is possibly because he himself is so clearly drawn. Mr Berstl gives a good deal of attention to depicting the character of the church’s opponents, and gives considerable care to making his Romans as well as his Christians important figures. He appears to have studied the sources of his material with some care, though in some places he relies on tradition rather than proved fact.