NEW FICTION

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28896, 16 May 1959, Page 3

NEW FICTION

The Wages of Hate. By Nigel Stephen. Harrap. 256 pp. This is a Montagu and Capulet story told in terms of a business feud in a small town on the bitter Norfolk coast in the early years of this century. Walter Rackham manufactures fish manure. His nephew, Maxwell Kershaw, who works for him as a clerk, is in love with his daughter, Elizabeth. She, however, prefers Kenneth son of her father’s most hated rival, Jarvis Hillstrom. The story follows the development of Elizabeth’s infatuation with Kenneth, his revelation as a blackguard in seducing and then abandoning another girl, Elizabeth’s elopement with him in spite of his character, and then her desertion of him, and finally after the war. Maxwell’s success as an author which leads him back at last to his beloved Elizabeth. Against this background is played out the more important plot of Walter Rackham’s losing struggle against the unscrupulous malpractices of Jarvis Hillstrom. Mr Stephen handles his atmosphere and local colour well, and portrays his characters convincingly—in particular a nice selection of shady minor figures. The plot tends to ramble: many of the incidents, though good in themselves, do nothing to further the story, but the writing is competent and professional. American Son, by Francis MacManus. Cape. 240 pp. Michael Donovan, an Irish writer stranded in Santa Fe in the course of a tour of the United States, is introduced at a party to a philanthropic millionaire couple, Melville and Martha Wade, who invite him to visit with them. Rather drunk, he accepts without thinking, only to find himself saddled with a neurotic woman yearning for her only son, missing in Europe. During his stay he learns that Martha Wade drinks too much and collects early Hispano-Mexican art treasures to compensate for the loss of her son and her guilt at deserting the church of her fathers. Smugly he despises her for being rich enough to be able to afford the indulgence of her neurosis, but is nevertheless charged by her husband with the task of tracing her son Terry when he returns to Ireland. At last he runs Terry to earth in a low kip where with saintly charity he lives like a bum and distributes his monthly allowance from home to the poor destitute with whom he consorts. Michael smugly despises him, too T-for being able to afford to play the saint, but discovers to his chagrin that it is not a pose after all. This is, as it were, a chronicle of the later career of Sebastian from Brideshead, but unfortunately the author seems to have lost his conviction at the end, for Ware senior descends upon Dublin like a deus ex machina and whisks Terry back to his comfortable home and we are left to conclude that the saint was a ! sham after all. This is a skilful ’ work and almost makes a very ‘ good book.

The Little Difference. By P. B. Abercrombie. Gollancz. 207 PP. “The Decline and Fall of St. Trinian’s, with other Incidental Affairs.” might stand as a subtitle for this delightful book, which is as good as Waugh and Searle at once. Vivian Mudge, sometime model and actress, is appointed to the staff of the Bardley Freedom School, an establishment in Cheshire remotely connected with education and run by two females of repellent aspect: one nice and woolly—Miss Amanda; the other fierce and clear-headed—Miss Geraldine. The rest of the staff range from the masculine to the bashful and from the prudish to the vulgar, while the girls who run about all over the book show an uncanny aptitude for acquiring significant and embarrassing information. A bucolic seaman on leave at a nearby farm and employed to instruct the girls in games is sacked by Miss Geraldine when she discovers that he has been keeping rendezvous with Vivian. Laura makes an unsuccessful pass at her publisher; a bogus traveller from Tibet is exploded—with oistols—at a literary party in London. You will not split your sides reading this book, but you will chuckle deeply and incessantly. Every kind of freak and vagary is reticently suggested and infallibly defined, and the language is exquisitely accurate.

London. You will not split your sides reading this book, but you will chuckle deeply and incessantly. Every kind of freak and vagary is reticently suggested and infallibly defined, and the language is exquisitely accurate. Means To An End. By John Wilson. Collins. 320 pp. This is a slick and efficient commentary on Lord Acton’s dictum about power. Chris Marshall, an artist manque; finds himself an executive in his father’s firm, although he despises his father for having built it. as well as all his colleagues and bosses for the ethics by which they work. Being a misfit he is shipped off to Europe on a “do-nothing” liaison assignment, but while there he finds some shady business going on among the firm’s associated subsidiaries. He discovers that some of his firm’s products, on the American list of prohibited exports, are being smuggled into Eastern Germany. He returns to the states to expose the culprits, but in the process finds that his disinterested concern for justice is sullied by the blind passion to win. Mr Wilson writes clearly and compulsively. The story moves with the pace of a good thriller, and at this level portrays convincingly the corruption of ideals consequent on intrigning in Big Business.

Light In Silence. By Claude « Koch. Gollancz, 312 pp. s Finian Joseph, a member of 1 the Community of the College of 1 St. Bardolph, a sort of university ' on the lip of the gorge of Niagara 1 run by the Ordo Servorum Men- ' dicantium, tries to escape his ' vows, but is at last recalled to the order by the influence of his 1 spiritual father, Brother Didymus, by the recollection of his dead prior’s counsel, by the involuntary witness of the community priest, Father Wheaton, and by the love of the girl whose face first prompted him to leave the order. If Mr Koch is a Catholic he ought to know better, if not, he Should have left the subject alone. For it is an important subject and in spite of its badness the novel gains power from the reverberations of its theme. Monks may be worldly, cynical, disillusioned, disgruntled and uncharitable, but by the mere fact of their profession they cannot be quite so unconscious as the brothers of the Community of St. Bardolph. The whole action is conducted in an air of fantastic unreality and the muddle in the writers mind is reflected in a lumpish prose.