NEW FICTION

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28926, 20 June 1959, Page 3

NEW FICTION

and Thomas. By John P. Marquand Collins. 448 pp. Often the reader comes to like Mr Marquand’s characters almost in spite of themselves. They may be inclined to cut their ethical corners a little fine; they may be a little too smooth, or they may have an undue concern for their own interests; but they are very human, and on the whole the impression is given that Mr Marquand has developed a real affection for them, too. His latest hero, however, deserves the regard that Mr Marquand intended him to get. This is a sympathetic, even a compassionate, portrait of a New York playwright, successful in the material sense but unable* to find real happiness not because of his faults, but partly because of his virtues. Chiefly, he is kind, kind to old-timers of the theatre and to casual acquaintances and kind to the women in his life. His troubles, and ultimately theirs, arise mainly because he gives too much and demands too little. • The pace is leisurely, even by the standard Mr Marquand sets for his contemporary novels, until he approaches a quite powerful climax, that carries the story swiftly to its close and brings Thomas Arrow eventually to his full stature as a man. As usual Mr Marquand rounds out an attractive picture of American life at about the Ivy League level.

Mademoiselle B. By Nancy Pearson. Harvill Press. 160 pp.

This is a strange little story of a French girls’ school, and of the romantic friendship of a girl of eighteen with one. of the staff. Mademoiselle B. is depicted as a remote, mysterious figure, communing silently with the shadowy entities—long-since dead—whose home had been taken over by the school, but whose portraits still hung on the walls. The girl’s schwarmerei for this aloof and charming character had no underlying complications. It was only when Mademoiselle B. confided to her the unhappy love-affair which had driven her from home, and the horrifying reason for her broken romance that homosexual undercurrents began to become apparent in the older woman. The girl, terrified by a new element in what was to her a shy adoration, turned against her former idol, and her subsequent rejection of Mademoiselle B’s timid advances resulted in tragedy. The novel appears to be based on a personal experience, and it has been set forth with a delicate sensitivity.

Sammy Anderson, Commercial Traveller. By H. D. Williamson. Angus and Robertson. 290 pp.

The hero of this novel is a commercial traveller who has his headquarters in Sydney and who calls on hardware stores in rural New South Wales. Sammy Anderson’s is the chief individual story in the book, but with it is interwoven the stories of the travelling fraternity which leaves Sydney by train on Sunday nights to return a week, or two, or perhaps three later. Country storekeepers and hotelkeepers add to the array of ordinary humanity tjjat Mr Williamson parades with ‘ perception and some deft touches. He has the knack for giving his characters just the emphasis they need to bring them to flower, and a x gift for story-telling at the pace the peregrinations of his travellers demand. Mr Williamson has written a pleasant story about men not often written about, but men' as he shows, well worth writing about.

The World of Henry Orient. By Nora Johnson. Gollanz. 214 PP. This competently written first novel shows great insight intp the minds of young people. The story opens at the Norton School in New York. One of the pupils, Valerie Boyd, though only thirteen, is already a talented musician and in her lighter moments seems brimming over with gaiety and energy. After a rather solitary period she strikes up a friendship with a classmate, Marian Gilbert. Marian’s main quality is her sincerity, and the friendship is described with a good deal of penetration. It is in the main a very happy relationship. Unfortunately Vai’s contacts with other people are not so fortunate; her family background, for instance, is unstable, and this makes her happiness somewhat precarious; As she herself realised, she was apt to become unmanageable. Even at the age of 13 it is necessary for her to have psychiatric treatment. In the nature of things the friendship between the two girls changes; hnally Vai is sent away to another school. They arrange to meet again in 10 years, when they will both be 23, “and probably will have more, sense than they do nOW ’» then again maybe they won’t.’’ Nora Johnson handles the pathos of the situation with considerable skill.

Goldfinger. By lan Fleming. Jonathan Cape. 318 pp.

There has always been a strong vein of cynicism in lan Fleming’s tales of that redoubtable pillar of the Secret Service, James Bond. Indeed the way in which Mr Fleming manages to tell his story, so volubly, all the time keeping tongue in cheek, yet never biting it off, holds an almost horrific fascination. With “Goldfinger,” Mr Fleming has gone just a bit too far. In this, the latest adventure, opposed to Auric Goldfinger. the richest man in the world, who has a pathological lust for gold, and naturally is the chief treasurer of Smerch, James Bond for the first half of the book behaves in his normal, tough, hardhitting and entirely credible manner. When however, the book reaches its climax with a projected raid on Fort Knox, utilising forces drawn from the whole realm of American gangsterdom, there is a definite suspicion that Mr Fleming has become scornful of his reader’s intelligence. Tut tut, Mr Fleming. The Secret Service is a serious business, please keep it so and let’s have no more of these distracting excursions out of reality into the realms of high fantasy.

The'' Stone Pigeon. By Leslie Blight. Michael Joseph. 266 PP. This is yet another Novel of the Soil, and inevitably demands the familiar capitals. All the component parts are here in rural Worcestershire—the rustic lovers, the old man, silent or yammering, in his corner, the farrowing sow and furtive gypsies, the nondescript dogs, Of old Meredith’s four sons the favourite, Larry, has been killed in the war, and the shock of this tragedy has unhinged his reason and driven him into a fantasy life of his own from which he refuses to be dislodged, except to make an occasional attempt to commit suicide. John, Bramwell and Paul all know that sooner or later they must send him to an institution, though John and the large, generous gypsy woman who cooks and cleans for the family are reluctant to put this decision into effect. The gypsies live after their fashion plundering orchards, poaching, and selling the results of these depredations innocently on a stall in far-distant Kidderminster. The author owes something to T. F. Powys, but writes well and with conviction of a countryside that he obviously knows and loves.

The Hellbuster. By Frank Bruno. Hale. 204 pp.

“The Hellbuster” is a highly novel about early New Zealand. It is original in that the author is a New Zealander who, as a writer, is quite lacking in the introspective qualities of so many of his gifted fellowcountrymen. There is no childhood dreaming in “The Hellbuster”; everything here is coarse to the point of brutality. Mr Bruno is only concerned to tell a full-flavoured story, and he does this extremely well. The scene is the Bay of Islands; the date 1843; and when the Rev. Jamie M’Fergus stepped ashore from the “Roaring Meg,” he had to fight not only for a hearing but for his life as well. Mr Bruno has invented some convincing characters for his thieves’ kitchen. They include “Lili du Mai,” half Maori, half French, “Champagne Jimmy,” (the Hon. James Aubyn Selkirk-Franklyn), described as “a long-distance drinker,” and the Sinister Cap’n “Bully” Krausen. “The Hellbuster” is full of fights, and murders with no gruesome details omitted. “Parson” Schlinder, for instance, has his head cut off with a broken rum bottle. “Headless, he sat blood-drenched at his table/’ Mr Bruno’s vision of the early days is conservatively described as infernal. Jupiter In The Chair. By Ronald Fraser. Jonathan Cape. 190 p.p.

Readers unfamiliar with Ronald Fraser’s earlier venture into science fiction, “A Visit From Venus,” will find it difficult to comprehend its sequel, “Jupiter in the Chair.” Fantasy and whimsy are the‘two most difficult aspects of comedy that an author can attempt to handle. When they are allied to mystical science fiction they become* downright impossible. “Jupiter in the Chair” is an attempt to describe the events of an interplanetary conference which follows a return visit to Venus by certain members of the Abbotsfield estate. Trout, the butler of the Manor of Abbotsfield (where the conference is being held) is the narrator of the strange events which follow the arrival of the delegates from outer space, but gives so little explanation of what has gone before that at times the story becomes impossible to follow. Keen readers of Mr Fraser’s novels will probably get a great deal of pleasure out of “Jupiter in the Chair,” but for the reader who picks it up with no previous knowledge, it will most certainly prove a disappointment.