NEW FICTION

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27446, 4 September 1954, Page 3

NEW FICTION

A* Oam of Hours. By Peter Skeltea. Chatto and Windus. 245 pp. This is a sensitive study of adolesobviously autobiographical. The central figure is an English boy, son of a prosperous factory manager, living in a Dutch seaside village. The Quality of the self-centred and dreamy ynrid of adolescence is skilfully conveyed in the descriptions of the youth’s flrst affairs of the heart and of the idle days of his vacation from the school that he hates. Ite is the jeore sharply etched for its abrupt ending. The preoccupations of youth pnirri between innocence and experience vanish, the outer world obtrudes forcibly, and the delightful life be has known disappears completely, when the Germans invade Holland and the boy is evacuated to England to the accompaniment of gunfire and bombers overhead. Rich in detail, leisurely and sensuous in tone, the novel is a haunting piece of writing. It is to be followed by other novels recording the changes in the people and places it describes under the German occupation. pfata McKeever. By Eleazar Lipsky. Andre Deutsch. 308 pp. Filled with dramatic action played out against the turbulent background of New Mexico at the turn of the century, this is a novel which not only makes good reading but would obviously make an excellent film. The writing has throughout a pictorial quality, and the scenes and characters are sharpiy defined and bursting with robust and vigorous life. The central figure is a distinguished barrister from the East, whose carer is temporarily in eclipse because of a sometimes illjudged desire to champion the oppressed. He is drawn into defending one of the leading figures in New Mexico’s racial feuds. Don Carlos de Xia has been brought to trial on a trumped-up charge of murder, but he is not eager to be defended. He is tasmined to be a martyr and thus the feeling of the Spanish eleiuent against the American. On the other side stands Dan Hogarth, a killer sheriff who has defrauded the Spaniard of his lands, and is equally eager on his side to use the trial to fan the flames of popular race-hatred. The barrister stands between the two fanatics, the symbol of the rule of justice. But to add further complication, he is a widower and in love with the daughter of Dan Hogarth, his chief enemy, who is herself a lawyer. The novel is hardly subtle, but melodrama is avoided; and there is plenty of autheatic local colour and skilfully handled action. Be Unrelenting Day. By Stella Mortan. Hodder and Stoughton. 251 Stella Morton’s new novel handles fee difficult theme of religious con’ssion. A much loved priest in a W parish dies and leaves among his Papers a manuscript telling the story of his earlier life. Moving from London into the country to-help his ailing wife, he meets Naomi again and the two find themselves deeply attracted. Naomi, however, is a Catholic end to her the idea either of divorce or a clandestine love affair is equally abhorrent; she regards the decision ■s a choice between human and divine love and chooses the latter. She toes away and Conrad is full of bitterness towards the faith that has kept then apart But he too finds himself Posing from hatred to belief. Two things make it an intelligent and sat’fying book. First, Miss Morton has 1 practised ability as a writer that ttkes her characters living and human stations; and second, she writes of ter thorny subject the “fight between «ve and love” not only with under*j*nding and sympathy, but with Comtek sincerity. She convinces the and this is most important, that jjomi’s problem is a real one and not gt a neurotic scruple, and because teas Morton herself is convinced of Jte rightness of the solution, her book >n integrity and wholeness in with the importance of the u>e ®e it proposes. frg tetreat, or The Machinations of ■Jgy. By Forrest Reid. Faber.

. Forrest Reid belongs as a novelist ® the school of E. M. Forster. A quiet *ffd highly sensitive writer, he proin the thirties three distinghMied novels about childhood, the *2® Barber novels, the second of ’®ich (published 1936) has now been Mr Reid tends to divide Iw * nto two races of beings—- , who are sensitive, imaginative and and They, who are matter-of-get, sensible and a little crude. But zL.S®!icate feeling for the private J®™* °f a child, his easy handling of two planes of fantasy and reality, JJJ* the beautiful simplicity of his jyie make him a novelist who should Jot be forgotten. Crossroads. By Jasper Sayer. *«uttan Cape. 224 pp. dyer’s novel is a restatement v °ld problem of a marriage that a crisis, against the backthe Present difficulties of A? B fin glish middle classes. The marRichard and Ann Tendring a stage of emotional deadand a staleness that is continuworsened by the nagging anxiety a* Perpetual financial crisis; like to? 1 People of their class they find continual effort to educate their in the way that they themia tk have been educated and to live way they have been used to 15 exhausting both their finany, ®nd nervous reserves. In turn both faced with a problem, JJ’wds a serious emotional affinity, Ann’s disturbing even if of no to her; in addition Richard is an easy but dishonest end to "faucial troubles. Once more domestic affairs bring matters to and their marriage passes » crisis to a new phase. Mr « an observant viewer of the sc ene and his background of middle class life in the years war is a shrewd piece of an h description. He is Zjjauy skilful at observing people '*** ms pictures both of the wife and

husband are understanding pieces of writing. The picture of doubt and indifference gradually growing in two minds, and of hope slowly dying in the wife’s is suggested with sensitiveness and subtlety. The book mounts slowly to a climax and passes to a stage of reconciliation quickly. The solution is in itself convincing and logical, but perhaps it is too suddenly achieved. Nevertheless in the solution Mr Sayer shows his understanding and his skill in handling his characters.