New Fiction

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30100, 6 April 1963, Page 3

New Fiction

The Gift. By Emyr Humphreys. Eyre 4k Spottiswoede. 31S pp. “The Gift” is a novel about the acting world. It describes a crisis in the career of Sam Halkin, an ambitious and, the surface at least, an extremely self-confident actor in television. Sam, who narrates the story, has big plans for his future, including an important part in a film. Unfortunately the tweak he is expecting does not materialise; instead he finds himself a pawn in the hands of younger, more talented men. The chance reading of an influential producer-friend’s intimate diary, in which Sam’s talent is described as “limited,” reinforces his deepest, unexpressed suspicions of his own inadequacy. At the end of the book he is still playing minor roles on television, having turned down a lucrative part in a horror film (in which he was to appear as a creature, half-man half-ape) as being unsuitable to his talent. In spite of his selfish egotism, Sam is a likeable fellow, who, unlike some of his more ruthless friends, is old-fashioned enough to have principles about his art. As a result, he is constantly being "taken for a ride” in the interests of rival ambitions. “This is a fight, a battlefield,” his friend Jay tells him, having just cut Sam out of the film part he has been dreaming about. “And if you haven’t got the guts to fight you shouldn’t be in the game. So for God's sake don’t go on to me about the actor as an artist and artistic integrity.” As a satire on the world of artists and actors, “The Gift” is very good entertainment, though at times the comedy becomes long-winded and boring. Yet in toto, it seems to add up to very little. Sam himself is a mediocre figure, neither wholly comic nor at all tragic in his thwarted ambition. If he is not a star of the acting world, he is just as certainly not a downright failure. Alive though he is, Sam is altogether too trivial a character to be of more than subsidiary importance in a serious work of fiction. A Month Soon Goes. By Storm Jameson. Macmillan. 214 pp. The female of the species who is deadlier than the male, and not above eating her young, is a familiar enough figure in fiction but she has never been portrayed better than in this book. Sarah Faulkner has earned fame and fortune as a professional entertainer. During the 16 years covering her stage career she has returned for brief visits to her husband, a near-impoverished country squire, and the daughter she had first left as a fat iuddly infant of two. When the book opens she has once more “come home,” accompanied by her acid secretary, and her masseuse (both of whom hate her) to savour the sweets of domesticity for a few weeks. Edward Faulkner, her husband, is a semi-invalid with a heart ailment which may take him off at any moment. Harriet, her daughter, is now a sulky, unsophisticated, awkward eighteen, regarding her mother with piteous admiration in a love-hate relationship which could develop fully into either of these extremes. Also in the picture is Arnold Hudson, a dilettante author, who has long been Sarah’s lover, as well as a friend of her husband’s, and who despises himself for the slavishness which binds him to the one while making him disloyal to the other. The incursion into this circle of a brash, self-assertive young playwright, who delights in being offensive, does not help to make the situation harmonious, since it is obvious that Sarah is attracted by him and is going to add baby-snatch-ing to her other man-eating activities. The character of Sarah is exquisitely etched. Egotistical, unscrupulous, and amoral she would still be likeable if it were not for the barely-conscious cruelty with which she treats her vulnerable child. She will have none of the girl’s company or give her any money for a much needed improvement in her wardrobe, and her eventual humiliation at young Harriet’s hands is richly merited. This is a brilliant social comedy and should enhance the author’s already considerable reputation.

Rosemary for Remembrance. By Ivy Preston. Whitcombe and Tombs. 191 pp. When Rosemary Ritchie surprised her fiance, Stuart Armitage, surreptitiously embracing her beautiful and sophisticated cousin, Martine, her girlish trust in him was permanently destroyed and in face of his earnest apologies and entreaties she returned his ring, and took herself off to Timaru to forget him. Here, with a pleasant office job and congenial companionship with two other girls in a flat they all shared, her heart mended with gratifying rapidity. Then she met Kenneth McLean, a handsome divinity student and reluctantly (because she could not see herself as the “Lady of the Manse”) she found herself falling in love with him. It took a trip to Europe and a meeting with Kenneth in Edinburgh, where he was completing his studies, to convince her that after all she could face the responsibility of being a minister’s wife. When they had both returned to New Zealand she found Martine only too anxious to relieve her of yet another fiance. Needless to say, Ken proves to be of sterner and more honourable stuff than Stuart, and all ends happily. This story of the innocent amatory adventures of young people, together with some, pleasant descriptions of the South Island countryside, will fill pleasantly an unforgiving minute tor romance addicts.