NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30082, 16 March 1963, Page 3

NEW FICTION

Liam’s Daughter. By Joan Lingard. Hodder and Stoughton. 192 pp.

This is a first novel of unusual merit, and reveals a penetrating understanding of modern youth. The Donovans and the Wilsons live in Belfast, and have been friends for 20 years. Alan and Hannah Wilson are childless, and Liam and Margaret Donovan have an only daughter, ■ Siobhan. Liam’s unhappy youth in a Dublin slum, and Margaret’s tooconventional unbringing have combined to make them compassionate as well as loving parents, and at 19 Siobhan has never been forced into compliance with their wishes. Though she scorns all forms of religion she breaks off her engagement to Brian Flynn who has insisted on the usual provisions in a Pro-testant-Roman Catholic marriage. The breaks leaves Siobhan in a dangerous emotional vacuum with her half-baked, purely material values. Brooding and edgy, she accompanies her parents and the Wilsons on a summer holiday in Provence where she finds an outlet for her frustrated passions in making a dead set at Alan Wilson. The outcome is naturally disastrous, and only her father’s firm hand, too long withheld, prevents an allround debacle. Liam, the strong man, unconventional, disputatious. but clinging firmly to his principles; and his sensitivity in keeping his long-dead love affair with Hannah Wilson from his love-besotted daughter is in contrast to ' the girl’s egocentric conviction that her passion for Alan should be allowed to override the feelings of all those whose lives must be disrupted by it Joan Lingard should have a successful future as a novelist

Memory’s Yoke. By Mavis Arete. Wright and Brown Ltd. 174 pp.

The heroine of Mavis Arete’s latest romance is a high-spirited girl who has an unhappy life with a cruel and overbearing aunt The small New Zealand township in which she lives fa a hotbed of gossip concerning a newcomer, Chris Penton, and the girl, Tinka Ibbotson. who has met him by chance, defends him boldly and is physically chastised for her temerity. Chris Penton has bought a secluded property and lives there with a woman who is known to be not his wife, but Tinka induces the kindly minister, Brett Manning, to investigate the situation and the lady proves to be Fenton’s mentally deranged sister, Lorraine, who suffers from the delusion that her husband, who bad been killed in a motor accident in England, is still

alive. Because of a tender conscience which imbues him with a feeling of guilt for his brother-in-law’s death. Chris had abandoned his practice as a Harley Street surgeon Tn order to look after his sister, and has brought her to New Zealand to start a new life. But Lorraine proves to have a mind of her own and, seeing that Tinka and Chris have fallen in love, she settles her problems in her own dramatic fashion. Mavis Areta has considerable expertise and this book is a safe library choice for the tired housewife.

Two Ways In The World. By Alaric Jacob. Eyre & Spottiswoode. 253 pp.

The theme of Mr Jacob's novel is the Cold War and its effect on the life of Alun Fox, an English journalist and a Communist. As a war correspondent in Moscow, Fox is impressed by the sincerity and selfless energy of the Russians he meets, and comes to believe that the society they are building is, in spite of injustices, a humane one. Back in England after the war, he tries to convince his countrymen. “My basic feeling is simple as can be. Simple as ‘love thy neighbour as thyself.’ I feel that the Russians are basically right and that we are basically wrong. That Soviet society is, in essence, a good society—the only good society so far—while ours is still a jungle tempered by acts of charity,” he says. He can see only a stagnant conservatism and selfishness in his own country and a complete lack of the vision and energy which in earlier ages animated Mie lives of men like Wat Tyler and John Ball, the latter of whom, “500 years before the age of Marx, called for toe common ownership of toe means of production.” Russia on the other hand he believes fill! of Wat Tylers willing to sacrifice themselves for what they believe to be right His Left-wing opinions lose him his job, and he finds himself forced to take what work he can. At the end of the book he is working in a telephone exchange and still hoping. Many outspoken and pointed comments, not only on capitalism and Marxism, but on Christianity, English Socialism and the Welfare State, are sprinkled through the book. The pungency of toe political message is partly dissipated, however, by a flatness of characterfeation, and a lack of tension in the narrative, which prevent the reader from identifying himself with Fox in his dilemma The reviewer closed the book without feeling any compelling curiosity about the ultimate fate of Alun Fox. wondering rather, if the author’s theme would not have been irtore convincing expressed in another form.