NEW FICTION

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28346, 3 August 1957, Page 3

NEW FICTION

Doves in My Fi<-tree. By Ruby Ferguson. Hodder and Stoughton. 349 pp. Mrs Ferguson first made her name as a novelist with her “Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary?’ This was a lovely book with a eharm all its own and the author showed clearly her ability to delineate character. Since then she has written eight more novels, and “Doves in My Fig-tree” is her latest. Readers will be a little disappointed. The venue is the Channel Islands after the war, and though the descriptions are authentic and charming, the plot, lacks depth and the story as a whole fails to compel the reader’s interest. Though the characters are clearly drawn there is a tendency to caricature, and this makes for a feeling of unreality. Briefly, the story is as follows: At the summit of a successful career, Eric Chartrand left London and returned to his home in the Channel Islands to take his place as the head of hit family. He had been away for eight years and finds the different members of the family difficult to deal with, for they are dominated by Aunt Delle, a matriarch whose rule is motivated by ancient pride and prejudice. When the hero tries to get into his own house, he finds it shut up; and when he tries to help the black sheep of the family he again meets with no success. Finally, Aunt Delle has a fit and dies, and at the end of the book, Eric Chartrand Ifeaves the islands with the girl he has fallen in love with. The present visit of the Queen to the Channel Islands makes this light novel quite topical for its descriptions; but it is a pity that there is • not more substance in it. Nevertheless, it can be recommended as pleasant, light reading.

The Flight into Egypt. By Jean Bloch-Michel. Longmans. 234 PPEffectively translated from the French, this story follows the impact of a future war on an ordinary family, Pierre, Yvonne and their three children. From a completely devastated metropolis the few survivors scramble oyer the ruins to the nearby river and main road. The drove, growing as it goes, wanders on in migratory fashion. Any attempt to break away from the main stream is prevented by the silent menace of tanks at the cross-roads. Pierre, suspicious of the funnelling of the survivors towards who knows what, breaks away and shepherds his family across country to an untouched village at the head of a valley beneath mountain fastnesses. After warning the village, the family retires to an eyrie and watch from safety the extraction of every living soul from the valley below. They choose to live in the finest house, garner all the stores from the rest, and settle to exist. After some years the rumbling of bombs and artillery herald the approach of a liberating force.

The Day the Money Stopped. By Brendan Gill. Gollancz. 190

PP. The' action of this story lasts between mid-morning and lunch in a Connecticut lawyer’s office. Charles Morrow flaunts in from New- York in his new golden Cadillac to aecept his inheritance from his father’s estate. Spendthrift, favourite son of an indulgent father, he finds the fortune divided between his brother and sister while his consolation prize is his father’s library. The adjustment to these new prospects by the philandrous, charming scamp is splendidly done. All action takes place in dialogue, the author accomplishing with a twist of phrase or turn of word as much, and with more punch, as a paragraph or two of explanation x>r description. The Power. By Frank M. Robinson. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 190 pp.

This is an eerie story which holds the reader in suspense until the end. A committee set up by the United States Navy for research into human survival is being slowly wiped out. Professor Bill Tanner, chairman of the committee, is removed from his university post because the “power” has destroyed all his records and those at /his bafik, and so the authorities claim he is an imposter and forger. The first of the committee to die is John Olson. Investigating Olson’s death, Tanner visits Olson’s home town and there realises that a certain Adam Hart, once Olson’s best friend, probably has something to do with all the mysterious occurrences. When Tanner returns to Chicago he finds that he himself is a wanted man. The “power,” which is superhuman, still haunts him, and slowly other members of the committee are either killed or die, it seems, natural deaths. After a process of elimination, Tanner locates the person with this strange power over other humans and destroys him. This book, acclaimed the ‘‘thriller of the month,” thoroughly deserves the honour. The Other Side of the Wall. By Janet McNeill. Hodder and Stoughton. 191 pp. This is a suburban family story featuring an unsuccessful writer who never quite produces his epic, his self-sacrificing wife, and their two children. The elder, Dennis, is being pampered towards his degree finals and the complications added by the girl next door with her slick brother make a readable and credible tale. The Young Life. Leo Townsend. Jonathan Cape. 283 pp. This is one of the saddest books ever written. The story opens with a policeman bending over the dishevelled, sobbing figure of Jackie Watson, 14-year-old viptim of a mass violation by a gang of louts. With a most tender touqh and no echo of sensational writing, Townsend takes Jackie through her pitiful life—the searing ordeal of Court evidences, unsuccessful marriage, and her final reversion to childhood hugging bar doll, after her one friend and protector had been strangled and raped by the very thug who led the gang responsible for her own ordeal some years before. On that occasion he was found not guilty and the effect of that escape from justice on his subsequent career of crime till he reaches his peak at murder, is neatly pointed. This is an excellent work on a difficult subject. It may (it should) shock; but never breaks with good taste.

The Fabulous Concubine. By Chang Hsin-hai. Jonathan Cape. 478 pp. This autKor is a Chinese pundit of the old school with layers of Western culture spread by Harvard among other universities. After diplomatic service' in many European countries he was called to Washington in 1941 to interpret the Chinese war efforts to the United States. Now he has resumed his academic career, lecturing and writing. In this first novel his English is exact and his presentation complete and detailed. Golden Orchid is a talented entertainer of lowly birth who, still in her teens, becomes the second wife of Shen Wen-ching and accompanies him to Berlin on his appointment as Chinese Ambassador to Germany and Russia. Quickly she adapts Western ways and becomes an outstanding social success, being received in audience by the Empress herself. Shen Wen-ching is recalled to face charges conjured up by political enemies in Peking. He survives his vindication only a short time, and Golden Orchid, destitute, manages a sing-song house. But not for long, for the Boxer Rebel"ion and invasion by foreign powers together with a fortuitous fate and friendship with the commander of the occupying forces cloisters her in the Imperial Palace where by virtue of her intercessions she quickly becomes a legend as a ‘‘Lady of Bounty” to her people.

Render Unto Caesar. Mavis Winder. A. H. and A. Wi Reed. 190 pp.

The setting of this story in and about Christchurch gives it undoubted attraction for local readers.- Akaroa, Kairaki, jostling Friday-night crowds, snacks in a milk bar just beyond Woolworths, the Hinemoa fairy-lit outside the Heads, all give full local colour. Anthony and Jocelyn Selbey are an ideally suited couple who realise after six years of marriage that they have never been in love. A South African tourist who infatuates Jocelyn prompts the discovery. The separation, the tragedy engendered by Jocelyn’s withdrawal of her capital from her husband’s business, and finally the regeneration of the marriage are all worked out and written in a most competent manner. Mavis Winder is fulfilling the promise shown in her earlier works.

The Night of the Tiger. Al Dewlen. Longmans. 264 pp.

Julius Rupp returns to a frontier town, Coldiron, Texas; with a fortune he earned shooting buffalo. In Coldiron, all unknowing to Julius, his wife Jessie, is courted by the town’s only banker. This is a setting for a pretty story. But before Rupp even arrives he is set upon as a rustler and branded on the chest with a cross. Everyone who has been branded with a red-hot iron will realise that Rupp was deeply offended by this reception, especially when his fortune disappeared as well. His ' vengeful stalk through the town makes memorable reading.