NEW FICTION

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28606, 7 June 1958, Page 3

NEW FICTION

The Goblins of Eros. By Warren Eyster. Gollancz. 370 pp.

The life of a primitive community in the Mexican desert lands is the subject of this forceful book. The people of Las Iguanas live in poverty, dirt and ignorance which even the priest cannot penetrate, while the landowner, Romero, whose steadfast belief in his own standing as an aristocrat’ makes him consciously tyrannical, directs their destinies with a sort of good-natured contempt. To this dusty backblock comes the citybred Edouardo Zamora to visit an uncle, and endeavour to buy back the lands orice owned by his grandfather which have been ceded to Romero. He finds himself, with some distaste, sharing a one-roomed hovel with a large family and assorted livestock. Here he meets the dispirited Dr. Ajello who wearily tends the sick, and lives with his memories of Romero’s elder daughter whom he had loved, and who had killed herself for the love of Juan Viste. an embittered Indian revolutionary. Viste raises- an insurrection, and it is in this final phase that the book attains some purpose, and the connecting threads of narrative blend and achieve a tragic climax. The book is perhaps overlong, but the study of character is memorable, and lust, treachery and occasional flashes of nobility in a community largely devoid of hope or motive-power is made credible.

The Edge of Darkness. By Mary Ellen Chase. Collins. 255 pp.

There is a poetic flavour in this quiet tale of a small fishing community living on an isolated stretch of the coast of Maine. An old woman dies, and all but a handful of unregenerates are the sadder for her passing. In successive chapters the history of her neighbours emerges, and her influence on each is stressed. None of their stories are remarkable, but they are of the stuff of life The old woman’s drunkard son Thaddeus, always piteously trying to reform—even after his prosperous and exasperated wife has left him—and as regularly backsliding: the good-hearted pair, Joe] and Lucy Norton who keep the local store, their profits being precarious when bad weather means giving extended credit; the Blodgetts, Stevens’s and Sawyers each battling with some inner discontents, and .the old man, Daniel Thurston, only a few years junior to the deceased, whose bitter sorrow for the death of his old dog is movingly described. AH these follow the old woman across the water to Shag Island where she had been born and wher£ it was her wish to return for her burial.. As the September day doses, and they know that they are on the edge of the darkness of the coming winter, a new community spirit *akes hold of them, and they forget their troubles and tensions in a sense of close-knit friendship

The Unforgiven. By Alan Le May. Collins. 256 pp.

Despite the author’s dry, laconic style there is an epic quality in this tale of the Texas prairies in the 1870’s, when hostile Indians could bring overnight a swift and hideous death to its white settlers. Feuds among the white families themselves, carried over as often as not from partisan sympathies in the recent Civil War, added to the general hazards of an unbelievably hard existence. The Zachary family had a cattle ranch west of the Wichita, and a solid house of which they were justly proud, for the marauding Kiowa and Comanche Indians were wholly unable to breach well-guarded walls, and so were wont to bypass the Zachary stronghold during those terrible nights of the “Kiowa moon” when they carried out tfyeir forays on the white men’s home and cattle. Trouble for the Zacharys blows up when the crazy Abe Kelsey, whose wife and child have been murdered by Indians, declares that Rachel, apple of their eye to her mother and three brothers, is a foundling of Indian blood. That she had been found as a baby by old Zack is of course known to his widow and her sons though not to Rachel herself until white ’ neighbours turn against the family after accepting Kelsey’s story. The Indians also affect to believe it and send a deputation to demand her return to the tribe. After this the battle is on and the tale works up to a tremendous climax. Mr Lee May’s parents were raised in Texas, and his writing has the authority of first hand information. The “horse Indians” emerge, not as noble savages, but as hideously cruel and treacherous barbarians. This is not an ordinary “western,” but a story of the west that can be as confidently recommended to intelligent adults as to the most bloodthirsty of their juniors.

September Moon. By John Moore. Collins. 319 pp.

This is a story of the hopfields in Herefordshire at the time of the annual picking, when gypsies, Black Country workers on holiday, a party of Welsh men and girls 1 and other miscellaneous types gather to pick the hops as well as to make love, thieve, ’fight and drink. Mr Moore’s canvas is crowded but never dull, and his drawing of character humorous and perceptive. The connecting thread of the book is the love of Tim Sollars, son of the stern, prosperous farmer, John Sollars, and Marianne Tomkins, the daughter of John’s feckless but good-hearted neighbour who is on the perilous verge of bankruptcy. Tim and Marianne have each had many casual love affairs but are both agreed on regularising this one at the altar The struggle for supremacy as “King of the Gypsies” between Wisdom and Black Barty provides plenty of bloodshed and some grim drama, while the earnest proselytising of a mission to the hopfields, consisting of a handful of young Oxford undergraduates, and the efforts of a class-conscious tradesunionist to ferment strikes among the pickers add two more ingredients to a colourful brew. Mr Moore has written several books about his native county, and the spirit of rural England during an exciting harvest time is embodied in this meaty and light-hearted work. ■ ♦ ‘

Young Man in the Sun. By Peter Greave. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 255 pp.

The lot of the “poor white” in India today is hard indeed, and in this rueful chronicle of a lazy and unsuccessful salesman in Calcutta the author highlights both the pathos and humour of his situation. The bored victim of high-pressure sales-talk by his American employers the salesman makes timid and spasmodic attempts to interest “prospects”— some of whom are compatriots and others suspicious and antagonistic Indians—to invest in high priced refrigerators, while managing to live meagrely on the retaining fee which the firm grudgingly accords him. He dislikes, nis colleagues, detests his customers and is ashamed of his own shabby gentility. But he is young and not wholly unhappy. A chance sight of a lovely girl sends him soaring into the realm of romance, and on the strength of a lucky sale he proceeds to expend most of his working days on pursuing his charmer. Prudence, however, dictates that he should try to interest at least one “prospect, the rich, evasive Mr Prasad, in his de luxe line of commerce, and the story is concerned with his persevering efforts to pm down this promising customer, and to captivate the almost equally elusive Jobina. The climax ot these twin endeavours is a masterpiece of irony. Mr Greaves obviously knows the country and the people about whom he writes, and is able to make the most of that curious blend of flamboyance and bathos which illuminates the speech of the babu. Mr Greaves has written an oddly touching, and at times very amusing book

Come Out To Play. By ’Balaam* Michael Joseph. 206 pp.

The assorted tribulations of a budding schoolmaster provide the theme for this light-hearted i and very readable novel. Arthur Pilgrim, who has managed to acquire an honours degree in English at London University is first called upon to demonstrate his talents as a teacher at Hiawatha, a secondary school in Greenshire. His sufferings include public bullying by the headmaster, a riotously unruly class, the pitfalls implicit in collecting “dinner money” and the general troubles that beset the inexperienced. Sylvia Lunn, who teaches on the girls' side of the establishment, becomes the one solace of his existence, yet it is their innocent philandering that is the cause of his panic-stricken resignation. His next job is at Dunwood Grammar School where he immediately incurs the undying enmity of the second master by inadvertently taking his seat at the High Table on the first day of the term. The humours of coping with an intelligent'but hostile class, hell-bent on batting him are neatly pointed, and Arthur feels a negative relief when once again an innocent flirtation with a married woman puts him into an ambiguous situation resulting in his dismissal. Thoroughly dejected, he makes a despairing bid for a third appointment, and here, at last, fortune smiles upon him. Owing to a lucky confusion in names he finds himself promoted, and the book rounds off with his turning the tables upon his original tormentor, the headmaster of Hiawatha. '