NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30028, 12 January 1963, Page 3

NEW FICTION

Shu Of Fwk By Katherine Anne Porter. Seeker *M Wirtwf. 512 n . The composition of thia magnum opus was spread over 20 years and symbolises the individual's voyage through life, though the story coven a few weeks’ passage of a German steamer between Vera Cruz and Bremerhaven. There are about 50 first-class passengers as well as a nebulous mass of human cargo in the steerage consisting of redundant workers in the Cuban sugar industry who ar- being repatriated to Spain. The author has a good deal of fun at the expense of Teutonic prejudice and snobbery. For example, the only Jew in the ship is bundled

unceremoniously from the captain's table where be had been given a seat in error, and is followed into social limbo by an irreproachable Aryan when he is found to have married a Jewess. The learned professor and his wife, who with their cherished white bulldog Bebe are prone to sea-sickness at unpredictable moments, are just a little too obviously cast as comic relief, but the elephantine gambols of Herr Reiber and his giggling inamorata Lizzie are uncomfortably true to life. The author is not much kinder to her own compatriots, a drunken and libidinous Texan, and the two young people. David and Jenny, who have eschewed marriage and whose lovehate relationship is never satisfactorily resolved. This puppet-stage is enlivened by a troupe of Spanish dancers, all of them pimps and prostitutes whose combined resolve is to despoil the foreigner The book effectively strips humanity of its pitiful defences, and is obviously good cinematic material.

Paradise Reclaimed. By Halldor Laxness. Methwen. 254 pp.

The unfamiliar idiom of this book will make it hard for those unacquainted with Scandinavian myth to follow. In Iceland about 100 years ago lived Steinar, a good unworldly man who, yielding to the proselytising fervour of his compatriot Didrik sailed away to America to make a new home for his family in Utah, which the Mormons were busy proclaiming as heaven upon earth. His prolonged absence from home exposed his wife, son and daughter to a rascally neighbour, Bjorn, who dispossessed them of their land and seduced the girl. The latter’s innocence was such that she was quite unable to account for the baby inexplicably born to her, and in the face of the inquiries from officialdom and Bjorn’s offer of a husband who would claim paternity of the child continued to aver that no conduct of hers could explain its arrival. “God is almighty” was her logical explanation of the whole baffling bustneas.

The polygamous habits of the Mormons are also explained in terms of God’s plans for his Latter-Day Sainto—superfluous women being neatly gathered up by prosperous citizens and given an honourable status. The Icelandic scene and customs as well as early days of the Mormons are presented in terms of deceptive simplicity in which pathos and irony are nicely blended. The author won the Nobel Prize tor literature in 1955. The book is translated by Magnus Magnusson.

Martina. By Margaret Traill Bartteet. Rigby. 224 pp. The publishers truly describe this novel as being in the Bronte tradition. A quiet story, with an undercurrent of menace it is told in the phraseology of an earlier age when a formal address (“Miss Portia” and “Mr Make”) was customary, and restraint was the keynote of good breeding. Martina Webb, seeking to put a private sorrow behind her, accepts the post of housekeeper to the Bayne family who live in a big, convictbuilt house in the Hunter Valley. New South Wales. A tiny and sinister woman of great age, Mrs Bayne retains a tyrannous and miserly sway over her four grandchildren.

The property is hers absolutely, and not a penny of money is spent which she has not authorised. Makepeace, her only grandson, manages the place; Portia and Miranda, both ageing spinsters, have not for years been allowed to leave it. Only the lovely young Jenny, blinded in an accident is in any way indulged by her grandmother. The sombre atmosphere and brooding undercurrent of misery in the household imbue Martina with a passionate desire to break down the old woman’s power-, while her growing love for Makepeace keeps her rooted to her job. Mrs Bayne’s uncanny powers of divination, her sadistic cruelty to the spiritless Portia and her love for her choir of

mechanical singing birds all combine to build up a terrific tension culminating in an unexpected and highly dramatic climax. The period is not specified, but from its social conventions could hardly be far into the twentieth century, which makes the use of insulin on which the denouement hinges appear to be slightly premature. But this does not detract from the eerie charm of an unusual novel A Captive In The Land. By James Aldridge. Hamilton. 376 pp. Spaciousness characterises everything James Aldridge does, and his latest novel, like its predecessors, “The Last Exile” and “Heroes of the Empty View,” is on the grand scale. Probably the most exciting part of “A Captive in the Land” is the first section, which some novelists would have expanded into a

novel on its own. What follows this is a series of psychological studies very different in tone from what baa gone before. Nevertheless all that Mr Aldridge has to spy concerning the Russian character is particularly interesting at the present time. Rupert Royce may be called the hero of “A Captive in the Land.” He looks at life from a detached point of view, but shows greet practical capability if the need for action arises. When the book opens, he is a member of ti>e scientific crew of a British aeroplane engaged on geophysical research in the polar regions. In the course of the flight, the wreckage of an aeroplane is seen on the snow. There is one injured man, obviously in a bad state, visible down there. Royce offers to parachute down and attend to this man, while the aeroplane flies back to the nearest base for help. But no rescuers come; end after some weeks Royce begins to drag his patient, Alexei Vodopyanov, towards the south on a light sledge. The attempt seems hopeless; and the two men are on the point of final exhaustion when they are found by a group of Eskimo hunters. Royce is hailed as a hero by the Russians, who invite him as an honoured guest to their country. Rather cynically, Royce accepts, and he also agrees to do a little spying as a sideline during his visit This is not a happy arrangement for Royce is continually haunted by the fear that his guides and escorts have guessed what he is doing, and that he is being observed by secret agents. In addition, he falls in love with Vodopya-

nov's wife, Nina, and so has another painful emotional problem to solve. “A Captive in the Land” cannot be called a happy book. This author could never contrive a facile solution to the troubles into which his Characters are so inevitably plunged. A Simple Honourable Man. By Conrad Richter. Gollanez. 316 pp. Conrad Richter's latest novel “A Simple Honourable Man,” is the story of a Lutheran minister, Henry Donner. Mr Richter’s hero is indeed all that the title of the book, suggests; but what, for some readers, gives the story flavour and substance is the knowledge of peasant, almost primitive, American folk ways revealed in every line of it The spirit of the Pennsylvania Dutch has probably never been so eloquently expressed before. • Henry Donner’s call to the ministry came rather late in his life, when he already had a. wife and family and a settled place in the community. He could never be a learned man. His was to be a life of kindly service mostly in the rural communities; but from the novelist’s point of view it produced a surprising variety of incident