NEW FICTION

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28180, 19 January 1957, Page 3

NEW FICTION

Andersonville. By MacKinlay Kantor. W. H. Allen. 797 pp.

All the tragedy of the American Civil War has been focused into one small locality by Mr Kantor in this novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year—a small locality but a massive novel. Against the horrible background of Andersonville, where up to 30,000 Federal prisoners were penned in 27 acres without organised shelter or sanitation, and with inadequate food and insignificant medical attention, Mr Kantor does more than describe the last hopeless year of the Confederacy, the year when valour alone could not p.revail against the resources of the North. He shows what manner of men fought in the Federal Armies and for what motives, noble and ignoble; and how they reacted to the inhumanity that killed so many of them. In the lives of these men can be found a clear picture of the United States a century ago from the slums of New York to the clean air of lowa. His heroes, like his villains, are not all Northerners. While the Winders and Henry Wirz were making the shame of Andersonville. many Southerners were trying to obliterate this blot on the reputation of Georgia. As far as Mr Kantor has a hero and heroine, they are Dr. Harrell Elkins, who devotedly ministered as best he could to the sick, and Lucy Claffey, the death of whose three brothers for the South did not make her bitter, as it made her poor, crazed mother. Set off against the malevolence of some Southerners is the sheer wickedness of Willie Collins, a Northern gangster, who was eventually hanged by his fellow prisoners. The book teems with striking character sketches, historical as well as fictional. The most memorable, perhaps, is Marget Tebbs, the feckless, amoral, kindly prostitute: her earthy humanity contrasts so sharply with everything in the nearby concentration camp, with its cruelty and compassion, its degradation and its nobility. This is strong writing. Two criticisms are justified. Mr Kantor has surely the ability to rfiake his points without such a proliferation of foul language, lifelike though it certainly is. And was such sheer weight of book needed?

The Game and the Ground. Peter Vansittart. Reinhart. 187 pp.

Kasalten is the landed residence of an ancient German family. At the war’s end, two brothers return to their old home. The elder is a medical doctor, the younger an author who has written no books. They establish a school for some of the marauding children who wandered in vulpine bands over the devastated country that was Germany. They create an oasis for these children who have survived by tooth and claw, attempting to instil in them some idea of democratic living. These children, all armed, form their gangs with one group undertaking the maintenance of order and guarding the estate. A parliament is held daily, while with lessons on a voluntary basis school attendance of half a dozen is a good class. To disturb this delicate balance comes Nicky, the twin of the younger of the brothers. Sometime a member of the Nazi Secret Service, he was perhaps at one stage nf the war in charge of the cremation ovens hidden on the estate. His swashbuckling and uniform set up a fetish of hero-worship among the hordes of children whose only law was force until they reached their haven. With . the wings of the relief aircraft beating overhead on their way to Berlin in the great airlift, the final deliverance from Nicky and the evil powers he represents is worked out and the book leaves us with the great experiment still alive and going forward. Peter Vansittart writes with great power, catching the turmoil and savagery of his subject and placing it flatly, ungarnished. before his readers. This book, a seventh novel, is a remarkable achievement for so young an author.

The Strange Enchantment. By Geoffrey Cotterell. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 509 pp.

This fascinating story of success and failure, funny and sad by turns, raises a problem of universal interest—the problem of how far we can control the good and bad luck in our lives. It has as its central characters Charles Rowland and his delightful but unambitious wife, their two daughters. Isabel and Sarah, and two sons, Denny and Nicholas. Of them all, Isabel is the only talented one. The others are agreeable but unexceptional. The story starts in 1898, when the Rowlands start an easy climb upwards until disaster strikes the family when Charles is drowned. This leaves the family financially, and to a large extent socially, stranded. Mrs Rowland meets the situation characteristically. Everything is sacrificed for Denny, who is becoming an accountant. Isabel, the talented young pianist, has her concert career shelved. Gradually Denny drifts from the picture, until he himself meets his death in Flanders in 1915, and the story becomes concerned with Sarah and Isabel. Sarah marries, and later Isabel does, too, but her husband, a pleasant but debtridden naval officer, is killed in action in 1917. Isabel in later years meets a charming German, Rudi Peters, with whom she falls in love. He takes her to Berlin, where she realises that his interest in her is only her small fund of sterling—its value increased by the post-war German inflation. Mr Cotterell writes with an ease and fluency that is reminiscent of Howard Spring, and the tale he relates is no less interesting than are those by which Spring gained his fame. “The Strange Enchantment” is good entertainment.

AN EPIC OF THE ROYAL MARINES

Cockleshell Heroes. By C. E. Lucas Phillips. William Heinemann, Ltd. 252 pp.

During 1942, it became known to the Allies that Axis ships which managed to evade the British blockade were docking at Bordeaux, and there unloading cargoes of immense value to the enemy war machine. Various methods of hindering or stopping this traffic were considered. A principal difficulty was that Bordeaux lies some 60 miles up the Gironde estuary, which ruled out a naval operation or a fullscale commando raid or a daytime Royal Air Force raid; it was held that night bombing might incense the French without doing much damage to the ships. Lieu-tenant-Colonel H. G. Hasler, Royal Marines, a keen amateur small boat sailor, was a strong advocate of the use of canoes or I dinghies in raids on enemy-held ports. He was given his chance, and the Royal Marines Boom Patrol Detachment began training for its desperate venture. Their mission was to penetrate the Gironde estuary and go on up the Garonne river—in canoes. With them they were to take limpet mines, attach them to any German vessels they found in Bordeaux, and make good their escape into Spain. Brigadier Phillips has written a fascinating account of the planning and execution of this mission. Colonel Hasler emerges as a soldier with imagination and drive, and of immense personality, for it was he who was able to take ordinary young men and so train them in canoe-handling, self-reliance and fighting qualities that they were able to set out with at least some chance of success. He was also a soldier of great courage, as were all his men. But when five canoes finally set up from a submarine off the Gironde estuary it must, even to these stout-hearted men, have seemed the forlornest of forlorn hopes. Brigadier Phillips’s account of their tragic journey, which for most of them ended in death, makes an exciting and absorbing story. They damaged six ships, and caused consternation in high places in Germany. It was a really extraordinary adventure, and will rank high in the history of British arms. The book can be highly recommended to all who enjoy a simple and straightforward story of devotion to duty, endurance and relentless courage.