NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29910, 25 August 1962, Page 3

NEW FICTION

I_arteua;e of the Heart. By Elizabeth Cadell. Hodder and Stoughton. 192 pp.

Tais delightful book deserves a higher rating than tne “romance" which its title suggests. Indeed the characters of Fran Nash, her younger brother and sister, and the gifted and eccentric Loarders in the shabby house on Campden Heights which represents the Nashs’ only source of income, are reminiscent of “Tne Constant Nymph.” We first meet tne Nasn family in Portugal which they are hopefully endeavouring to tour in a £27 car. After it has broken down on a deserted road, they are rescued from a difficult predicament by Edmund Forth, a middle-aged London architect who is

visiting an inherited property in the district. Dur-

ing the few days wmch lae young people spend in his house. Edmund’s correct and inhibited values begin to crumble, and when he innocently entrusts Fran with a telegram for dispatch to London he little that he has set in motiM a tram of events that will revolutionise his life—for on that telegram the fate of two lonely old ladies depends, and Fran, who knows the circumstances of their case calmly reverses its instructions. with the result that Edmund finds himself on his return to London with a couple of highly eccentric octogenarians on his hands, and permanently installed in a flat in his house. This circumstance loses him his frigidly beautiful and impeccably bred fiancee, and leads him to make a very thorough search of his own heart, with a result that can easily be guessed. The dialogue and characterisation are brilliant, and the author has the rare gift of being ironic without being unkind. This is a book which should have a very wide appeal.

The Gallant. By Charitv Blackstock. Hodder and Stoughton. 223 pp.

A freakishly original plot carried to a surprise conclusion gives this novel the double interest of a romance and a thriller. The principal male character is seen throughout only through the eyes of women. To the respectable matron from Dallas. Texas, he is a shy. hard-up student whom she wants to help financially. To the flighty wife of a French shopkeeper he is plainly a satisfactory lover. To the plain middleaged. faintly-sinister Mademoiselle Manchon he is the fiance who owes her money and whom she intends to lead firmly to the altar. But to the heiress of a Yorkshire tycoon he is the gentle, romantic figure -with whom she has run away to his alleged home-town. Arles where they are staying, respectably apart, for three weeks necessitated by law before they can be married. It is here that an out-of-work journalist, Ross McCleod. comes into the picture. Sir Arthur Haley-Whyte has known him from a child and offers him a tempting fee for the job of separating, by force if necessary, Alice from her fortune-hunting Casanova. Ross, a trifle unwillingly. accepts the assignment and arrives in Arles during the Mistral festival. Alice, who knows of his coming, proves to be a nice young girl, much in love with her elusive wooer. Raoul Lestrange. and deaf to all Ross’s well-meant warnings against the possible result of her infatuation. At no time does he catch sight of Raoul, who steals in and out of Arles like a cat and only visits his beloved in secret. Only at the end do the two men come face to face, and the phrase has a surprising interpretation. Though certain anomalies and inconsistencies in the closing pages call for elucidation, it would spoil the reader's pleasure to specify them

Europe or Up and Down With Baggish and Schreiber. By Richard G. Stern. MacGtbbon and Kee. 229 pp.

The curious title vaguely puts one off this novel; but once into the story the reader becomes excitedly aware that this author, like Evelyn Waugh, Peter de Vries and James Thurber—to name a few of the skilled satirists—uses penetrating wit to contain cold anger at the social scene and to cut the human personality down to size. Yet a 3 along the way his biting ridicule of humanity is softened by a sweet gentleness and compassion for the loneliness of humans unable to c omprehend themselves or the world through which they drift. The story is about the separate adventures of three American men who decide to go to Europe after World War H. Eventually, their lives touch. Schreiber, a middleaged lawyer, quits home and job and heads for Europe How he travels the full circle of experience is both fascinating and bitter Baggish's search for European experience is utterly unsentimental The build-up of this man’s status from mean beginrrngs is a masterly piece ;>f work. Ward —the third American—is drifting about Europe on his father’s bounty He does not know quite what he wants, yet m the last scenes his satiation and revulsion, and his piercing homesickness, make what is perhaps the most evocative chapter in she book. Mr Stem i a crystal clear writer, probing mercilessly into human tnought and motive. Yet he has a delicate sense of life’s wonder and a profound resnect for its mystery He uses fresh, meaningful vocabulary, he has a special ability to draw comedy and pathos from ffte simplest incidents, and a n .table skill in creating compelling and wholly credible characters.

The Man on his Shoulder. By Kenneth Methold. Macdonald. 222 pp.

The description, "a novel of suspense.” hardly fits a nook teat is thoughtpro, okir.g but not specially exciting until the last tnirty pages, uhen the piled-up forces of jealousy and revenge abruptly break from restraint, before the denouement the book provides some good studies of character and social relational).ps, but no indication of where they may lead. During the war. Peter Stonor hao escaped from a prison-camp in Hungary with the aid of an underground organisation, and after the tragic happenings in Budapest in 19ofi he receives a direct appeal from one of those who had helped him. to assist escaping Hungarian patriots. Having s.nce the war been a journalist based on Hungary, he feels an obligation to comply Knowing mat it will involve an illegal entry into England ne seeks out other wartime inmates of his prison camp to help him formulate a plan, and is lucky to find that one of them. Jack Lee. is the proprietor of a public house in Teymouth, a small seaside town ideal for his purpose. Lee himself is an ageing man, but his daughter, Peggy, attracted by the thought of dangerous living as well as by Stonor himself, agrees to aid him in a scheme for bringing illegal immigrants ashore from a ship anchored a short way out. Inevitably, perhaps. Stonor seduces the girl, and her decent, steady fiance divines something of the truth. But only when a Peeping Tom begins to spy upon the couple does the drama implicit in the situation become apparent. Stonor’s idealism and his cold-hearted amatory exploits are somehow irreconcilable. and the book is inclined to hover between the excitement of adventure and rather squalid romance.

Love in Amsterdam. By Nicolas Freeling. Golianei.. 192 pp. A man becomes involved in the investigation of the murder of a former mistress Around this prosaic theme, an exciting, tense, psychological thriller of most unusual content has been constructed. The setting is chiefly in police stations and a remand home in Amsterdam where the suspected man is detained during the inquiry. Apart from the prisoner, the chief characters are a detective inspector and an examining magistrate. Under the investigations of both, the life of the dead wman is gradually revealed, and with th,is knowledge the crime is sheeted home. The characters are excellently drawn, the dialogue is crisply written by an author writing bis first bock in English. Dutch methods and Dutch law concerning the detention of suspects provide the story an unusual background.

The Hive of Glass. By J. T. and A. N. Martin. Rigby. 2311 pp.

The theme of this novel, which won the £ 1000 pr.zc in Rigby’s centenary competition, ,s the varying charac.er and fortunes of a small community in a New South Wales township. Set in the year 1898, it has a pleasant period flavour, and the authors have not stra.ned credulity by introducing sensat.onal happenings into humdrum lives Morden Vale is the home of Ella Westlake whose parents had originally owned the biggest house there but who have left her nearly penniless. and though at 24 she thinks she is heading for eternal spinsterhood, she is not without beaux. The attentions of the meek young Engiish rector. Peter Gelston. are wholly honourable. Not so those of Mark Mullane. the raffish Irish newspaperman. who hopes to assail the young lady’s virtue by secur.ng for her young brother a scholarship a: a good board-ing-school. Mullane's machinations also include a scheme for putting Morden Vale in the news by various publicity stunts which will benefit his paper Joe Hardy, the elusive and rough-tongued schoolmaster who is acting as locum for the sick headmaster of the local school, also pays some attention to Ella, but shows no sign of declaring himself, which occasions painful flutterings in her girlish bosom Village scandalmongers. betrayed maidens, overweening local notabilities. and even the poor wreck of a man who is the perennial butt of nasty little boys all have well-drawn portraits in the book.

Papa Martel. By Gerard Robichaud. Hodder and Stoughton. 239 pp.

This delightful saga of French-Canadian family life is refreshing at a time when novels on family life are obsessed with breakdown of the home, sordid family relationships and delinquency. Paipa and mama Martel brought up their family of seven before it was fashionable to talk 6f psychology and free expression. Yet they were well equipped to meet tihe rough bumps that beset all families. Their recipe: abounding love, affectionate discipline, faith in God and prayer, and plenty of common sense. There was no Puritanism, however, in the French-Canadian Roman Catholic concept of life—in fact when the clergy's ideas conflicted with Papa's and Mama’s on whisky-drinking, chastity vows or children’s education—the Almighty helped out with the right answers. The family episodes have a ring of great sincerity about them, for the author ; has looked back with loving nostalgia to fictionalise his own background. Not since “I Remember Mama” has life in tile family of a minority group c been so Warmly described.