Literary Views & Reviews NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30342, 18 January 1964, Page 3

Literary Views & Reviews NEW FICTION

Bride of Pendorric. By Victorio Bolt. Collins. 320 pp. For those that enjoy romantic novels and, for that matter Victoria Holt, “Bride of Pendorric” should be welcome. No doubt fired by the auccess, in both book and magazine serial form, of her earlier ‘"Kirkland Revels” and ' Mistress of Mellyn.*’ Victoria Holt has repeated the formula once again in her latest effort. If "Bride of Pendorric” has not been serialised it certainly should be since the many carefully-contrived climaxes appear at regular and the right sort of intervals. Pendorric, an ancient and gloomy family residence, has stood on the cliffs of Cornwall for several centuries and in the course of time has gathered unto hself both a ghost and a curse. Favel, the latest in the line of the Brides of Pendorric, and our heroine, is modern enough to be undaunted by such mumbo-jumbo and further demonstrates her ability to repair virtually non-existent family fortunes by discovering a conveniently dying millionaire grandfather as a next-door neighbour. The discovery that her husband, Roc Pendorric. knew of the existence of her wealthy grandparent before their marriage together with the presence, in the district, of several of Roc’s ex girl-friends and three attempts on her own life does tend to make Favel rather auspicious of her husband’s motives. However all is resolved happily and the ghost laid and the curse lifted.

Faraway Hill. By H. A. Lindsay. Rigby, Adelaide. 283 pp.

In 1921, young Doris and Les Farrant, newly-married, impecunious and with a baby on the way, leave Adelaide for a hutment and a poorlypaid job with a pick and a “banjo” on the Murray river irrigation works. Here, citybred strangers to the cruder modes of life, they are befriended by the rough but kindly Alice Garslake, who mothers them through their early want of experience. Thus begins this novel with a South Australian setting, a simply-told tale —indeed, in places naively-told—of a couple who find themselves retrenched from the pick and shovel, hammer and saw, and back again in Adelaide. The monotony and insecurity of work on an automobile assembly line is succeeded for Les by commercial beekeeping and all the journeyings and disappointments involved in the search for honey country. (One learns a great deal about beekeeping, and wonders at times if the story would not have been the better for a little less information in this respect.) So the Farrants, who have sold a cottage to live in a tent and follow the hives, eventually win through to ownership of a 1000-acre property with a homestead. On the way they encounter the opposition of ruthless, heartless types, but meet also some estimable friends. This is a readable, human story, but the reviewer cannot help wondering why in the early stages Leslie Farrant did not leave his wife instead of allowing himself to be prodded on by her periodical discontents. It is a question of characterdrawing: either Doris has been made to appear too superficial, too much attracted by trivial things in life, or Les is a stronger character than he appears to be in the book.

Acta of Darkness. By J. A Cuddon. Barrie and Rockliff. 382 pp.

The sleepy English village of Vereham is the setting for a novel which, in keeping with its locale, has quiet beginnings but becomes progressively more exciting, sinister and strange until Vereham becomes almost an English “Peyton Place.’’ Basically the story concerns a three-cornered love-affair between a beautiful, cultured but selfish young woman, a' young scientist and a middleaged Master of Fox Hounds. But Mr Cuddon's community contains other characters whose Lives, like the lives of most of us. are seldom what they seem on the surface. The young woman’s alcoholic father, her patient mother and sister, a free-thinking archaeologist • whose studies lead him into far more dangerous interests, an ascetic Catholic priest, a precocious young girl in his Communion class and her bellicose farmer father intersect and merge with the triangle. Mr Cuddon has an excellent ear for dialogue and portrays the religious struggles of the young scientist with great depth of spiritual understanding. The long passages of religious philosophy, in dialogue form, are particularly fine as is the struggle of the priest against the rising tide of black magic that sets the pace of this compelling story. “Acts of Darkness” is the conflict of reason and superstition, of wisdom and stupidity and is a startling and convincing example of the way in which both creative and destructive forces work through human agencies, exploiting their vanities and perversities. Find A Woman. By Elizabeth O’Connor. Angus and Robertson. 238 p.p. In her studies of the dwellers in the Australian outback Elizabeth O’Connor displays a pleasantly ironic touch. Sigurd and Waldo Peterson own a relatively small station in Queensland, inherited from hard-working Danish parents, and are contented with their primitive home and the services of their half-Chinese factotum Willy. They are not above appropriating the odd head of cattle from their neighbour, the aristocratic Miss Pringle, though they both have a wholesome and admiring respect for her. The only thing lacking in their domestic Eden is an heir to their property, and when Waldo falls in love with, and marries. Ruby Maloney—one of a wild and feckless Irish family—he is full of hope that she will produce, love and cherish his children. Unfortunately Ruby, though glad enough to leave her turbulent clan, has none of the instincts with which Waldo fondly credits her. - Her affections, such as they are, are fixed on the animal world, and she brings to the Peterson home, as her only dowry, a savage and fecund cat and an indolent pet sow. Ruby proves to have a vile temper, and evinces no tender maternal feelings when she learns she is to have a child. When her son is born, she is only too happy to hand over the responsibilities of motherhood, bottles, nappies and all to the adaptable Willy, and regards the empty world around her with increasing discontent. A travelling salesman solves her problems and those of her long-suffering husband. The story scintil- ! lates with wit, and is even I more entertaining than the I author’s prize-winning novel ‘‘The Irishman.’’

The King's Persons. Joanne Greenberg. Gollancz. 284 pp.

Here is a gripping story, set in the twelfth century, of a Jewish community in York, with its problems of living alongside Christians, a situation made more critical by the arrival of exiles from France, shocked and embittered by their treatment there. Growing antagonism between Jews and Christians at last culminates in wholesale massacre of the former, some of whom escape to a tower and prefer suicide to conversion to Christianity and the chance of survival. Within this framework one finds conflicts and relationships applicable to the controversy between Jew and Christian at that or any other time and to human life in any age. There are the conflicts between Barucli. the rich merchant who thinks only in terms of money, and his son Abram, who is searching for some deeper meaning to life; the deep friendship between Abram and Simon, the Praemonstratensian monk with the constant debating of two searching minds; the love of Abram and Bett, the Christian maidservant who becomes a Jewess rather than be turned out of the home she loves. Joanne Greenberg combines insight into human nature with an understanding of the position of the Jews, and gives the reader an enthralling account of an actual historical event.

Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry. By John Hale. Collins. 191 pp.

This is a first novel with a difference. Though written with the sharp observation and realism of the Angry Young Man group, it does not end on the usual note of futility and cynicism. The whole book occupies no more than one day in the life of the hero George, yet in that single day, George changes from the brash product of present-day living to something more like a human being with a conscience. As he returns on a one-day visit to his hometown, each human encounter, each new view of some well-remembered scene brings back recollections which are at conflict with his new outlook on life. His has been the typical success story which has taken him away from the brokendown seaside town which was home, but with his encounter with his estranged parents, he begins to see his present life in its true perspective. One lias the feeling that George goes back to his present life retaining the better ideals of both periods of his life. Time in the End. By Frances Margaret McGuire. Heinemann. 246 pp. To live for 20 years not knowing whether one’s wife was alive or had been killed at the hands of the Japanese is a situation which could well have developed out of the Second World War. As a basis for a novel it provides suspense, not of the “who-done-it” variety, but the nagging suspense suffered by a man who falls in love with the doctor who cared for him on his return from the internment camp, - yet cannot ask her to marry him in case his wife is still alive. Besides giving a good background picture of the war in the Pacific the story shows a side not so often seen—the privations and sufferings of the civilian population of the Pacific who were interned in Japanese camps and later brought back to hospitals in Australia where they were nursed back to health.

Fort of Silence. By Helen I Foley. Hodder and, Stoughton. 255 pp. The thoughts of a man and i a woman as they journey in a French railway carriage record this story. The husband, a senior British army officer, reflects upon a part of his life, during marriage, in which his wife had no part: the wife’s mind roams over an affair with an artist that she has been having for years without her husband’s knowledge. A marriage, outwardly placid and without serious disturbance, suffered from lack of communication, and as wife and husband sit reflecting, the deep reasons become apparent to the reader. At this stage, husband and wife are at crossroads, both seemingly being driven towards a future neither wants. But a solution appears after merciless selfexamination has exposed fallacies and illusions in the past life and both are brought to see and survey the “forts of silence,” reticence, and pride have erected around them. Helen Foley constricts her story skilfully; her characters evoke understanding and sympathy; her leisurely literary style is beguiling. A deeply-perceptive, charming novel will win many new friends for Helen Foley.