Literary Views & Reviews NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30390, 14 March 1964, Page 3

Literary Views & Reviews NEW FICTION

America America. By Elia Kazan. Collins. 191 pp.

In his first book of fiction, Elia Kazan, probably the best-known director of stage end screen in the world, tells e story of immigration to the New World. His hero is Stavros, a Greek youth obsessed with a desire to escape from tyranny in his homeland to his dream of America, and ready to do anything to fulfil it. Although S. N. Behrman may overstate the matter when he says in his preface that the author never falters, the conception and the writing is in general masterly. Copyrighted in 1961 as an unpublished dramatic work, “America America" reads like a dramatic script in which all the directions have been included. There is some brisk action, some dexterous scenepainting and quite dazzling character sketches. and glimpses of social and city background are contrived with great skill. The author knows his humanity well; he writes a kind of urgent uncomplicated prose, which, with the predicaments and ambition of Stavros, contributes to a convincing sense of moral outrage. The result is not a novel as usually understood; everything is in visual or spoken terms, so that perhaps it is best described as a scenario. Everything about it is exciting and good, except perhaps the main threrd. It is impressively done, but was it worth doing? Certainly the book con- , firms the intuitive under-; standing of character and the' art of characterisation on which Kazan’s career has been built, and it has the feeling of autobiography about it. Nevertheless Stavros’s story is authentic and its details must spring from the history of the Kazans and tlieir associates. But it is the subtleties and overtones of a film like “On the Waterfront” which one remembers when one reads of Stavros’s familyls life as Christians j under Turkish dominion; if anything is necessary to confirm the force with which a Koazan film strikes audiences everywhere, it is evidence like this, that he didn’t just learn the uses of symbolism out of fashionable literary text-books. “America America” is assuredly a kind of’ artistic tour de force; but it; may ultimately do more for| the reputation of Kazan the, old director than Kazan the new writer.

The Year Of The Tiger. By Martin Fallon. AbelardSchuman. 160 pp.

Each international crisis brings its quota of novels and in “The Year of the Tiger,” the background is communistoccupied Tibet. Against enormous’ odds, Paul Chavasse, a secret service agent, is flown into Tibet behind the Chinese lines, to attempt the rescue of Dr. Hoffner, an elderly British mathematician who had rejected a brilliant career as a scientist to devote his life to the mountain people of Tibet Before his withdrawal to life in Tibet, Dr. Hoffner had propounded a theory whereby space itself could be used as a source of energy. His theory was not fully understood at the time but with the advent of space travel Britain decided that his theory would be of immense value in the space race. With such a background the author has managed to produce not only a fast-moving thriller, but a brief glimpse of present day conditions in occupied Tibet.

Our Hills Cry Woe. By Henrietta Mason. Whitcombe and Tombs. 207 pp. ; This continued history of I the Spencer family makes a really good New Zealand novel. Although presented as j fiction, the problems of over- , stocking on hill farms, and subsequent erosion, are i recent memories in the minds of modem Canterbury dwellers who all easily see for ; themselves the worn out land. The author writes with ease iof New Zealand society m the late 19th Century and her characters for the most ; part ring true. In her I dealings with Roger Spencer, I the young lawyer newly returned from Oxford, who has ; to put off any idea of starting I a practice and has to take ■ over the running of High Acres in Canterbury’s hill country; and in her portrayal of his immediate family, and of their faithful friends i and servants, the author has been extremely successful. A second strand running througn this book deals with Alex- | andra Bates and adds bnghtI ness and glitter to a chronicle lof the lean years before refrigeration brought prosperI ity to New Zealand farmers, j Henrietta Mason has most I successfully presented one I page of New Zealand history I through the lives of the | Spencers and her book will j be enjoyed by those interested in the story of their own land, as well as by all . who I enjoy a good family book. The Player On The Other Side. By Ellery Queen. Gollancz. 240 pp. I Ingenuity salted with a pleasantly dry wit is the basis lof Ellery Queen’s mystery i stories, and the pattern is I repeated in this one. Four cousins, two men and two women, occupy four separate mansions which form a square in a fashionable part of New York. Under the terms of an eccentric millionaire’s will each is to inherit a fortune after 10 years’ residence in I York Park, as the square is i called, and if any of them I dies within that time his or I her share goes to the surI vivors. The four, though not I actively antagonistic to each I other, are sharply divided in temperament. Robert, a primsie man, is a keen philatelist; Percival's tastes run entirely to fleshy pleasures; Emily is an energetic social reformer; Myra, following an unfortunate love affair, has developed certain delusions. The other ' members and dependants of I the households are to all ap- | pearance steady and reliable. | Then three of the cousins die lin inexplicable circumstances j after receiving an enigmatic i communication by post. Ellery Queen is called in to | solve these mysteries and does I a masterly job of detection. The solution to the problem eludes him till the end, and his method of arriving at it is worthy of a mastermind. That Summer’s Earthquake. By Margot Bennett. Eyre and Spottiswoode 253 pp. Andrew Wallace inherits a farm, a farm that had been neglected for years. The fences were rotten, where they existed at all, and the land and the stock in poor condition. Nothing daunted Andrew throws himself, and his 16 - year - old sister, Jenny, into the enormous task of putting the land in good order and the stock, literally, on its feet. This is Jenny’s story of her long hard winter of grinding toil, of the coming of the spring and the blossoming of her womanhood and her love for Sam, Andrew's hired hand. The culmination of the story in the drama and tragedy of the worst earthquake New Zealand has ever known is an excellent piece of restrained writing.

A Farmer’s Wife. By Sheila Turner. Macdonald. 223 PPThis book continues the life story of Mary Braid which was so successfully recorded in “Over the Counter.’’ Written in diary form the story starts with her marriage to John Garrick, a bard working gentleman farmer at Lower Barley Farm. Day by day she contentedly chronicles the ups and downs of farm life, her own increasing happiness and the stresses and strains of personal relationships in the village and among the farm workers. Especially site tells of her mounting anxiety over Simon Rous and his negress wile I Lina, and his old grandmother. matriarch of the Rous clan, raises the family against him. Violence ensues, but at the end of the book as Mary and John leave Barley to take over his father’s farm in Somerset, she is able to set against the Rous tragedy, the rehabilitation of Cyril, the spiv who became a good animal worker and the help given to the shell-shocked Colonel Bickerton-Todd. She has also realised that her idealised notion of a village had been, in fact, only a notion and that the villagers were of the same mixed character as the rest of the world. Here are no dramatised or emotional situations, but a well-written, sane and factual day by day account of . farm and village life in England, and of the quiet, ever-increasing contentment found in their marriage by two older people.

The Shady Miracle. By Ernst Glaeser. Seeker and Warburg. 287 pp.

This is the story of Von Simmern a clever, dedicated architect whose plans, for re-building the centre of the town of Dreimunster, have i been accepted by the council. There was opposition of course, but well hidden beneath smiles and backslapping congratulations, Von Simmern, fully aware of the undercurrents, continues to work outwardly untroubled. It is the story of his early life and of his love for his wife Barbara, formerly the wife of one of his enemies. But above all it is the story of the people of Dreimunster of the good men and the bad, of the workers and the housewives, of the teachers and the students, most of them with one aim in view, to make money and more money, and most of them driven to work harder by the fears of their past or their hatred of it. Mr Glaeser sees his fellow countrymen with a cold clinical eye he says of the Germans . . . “They’re a strange people. Good and evil have been struggling inside them for more than a thousand years. Sometimes I think they’re like seekers after paradise who. when they fail to find it, give themselves to the devil and turn furiously upon themselves.” Finally to quote from the dust-cover. . Here is the miracle of the German economic recovery, and the shadiness of the past and of those who are determined not to forget.” Yellow Jack’s Island. By Frank Bruno. Robert Hale. 192 pp. This is a rip-roaring tale of piracy and vengence and, for good measure, the . hunt for a treasure island in the Pacific, in the days of schooners and pearl-fishers and lusty bad men.