Literary Views NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30633, 26 December 1964, Page 4

Literary Views NEW FICTION

A Moment In Time. By

E. Bates. Michael Joseph.

248 pp.

H. E. Bates is a prolific novelist on a wide variety of themes. He is well remembered for his two collections of stories about the Royal Air Force published during the war under the pseudonym of “Flying Officer X,” these stories being drawn from his own war-time experiences. His great and passionate love for the English countryside is evident in much of Mr Bates’s writing. In “A Moment of Time,” which is set in pastoral Southern England in the summer of 1940, he combines the traditional peace of the countryside with the bitter conflict of the Battle of Britain. The story is recounted by Elizabeth Cartwright, a young girl of good family, whose home is suddenly taken over by the Air Ministry as an Officers’ Mess. At perhaps the most impressionable age she is thrown into close contact with a group of young fighter-pilots whose only relaxation from desperate conflict in the air is an equally desperate gaiety on the ground. As Elizabeth passes through hero-worship, adoration, love, dread, disillusionment, anguish, bitterness and tragedy to final happiness, the story becomes an account of two battles, one for victory in the sky and the other for the soul of the girl herself, and it is the latter which is the major conflict The Battle of Britain does not intrude in the form of direct description of aerial combat but appears rather as “noises off” and expressed mainly in the conversations of weary but determinedly gay pilots. All this is tremendously effective and Mr Bates is to be congratulated on succeeding so well with such a delicate blend of themes.

Marooned. By

Martin Caidin.

Hodder and Stoughton. 378 pp.

Although this book is a novel in so far as the characters and central situation are fictional, its real importance is as an exhaustive account, written for the layman, of American astronautics. The basic situation is simple. An American astronaut has gone up in a Mercury spacecraft for a three-day flight, at the end of which the retro rockets, which should drive the capsule back into the atmosphere, fail to fire: therefore the pilot will die from lack of oxygen unless he can somehow be rescued within two days. Having established this, Mr Caidin then goes back some twenty years and more to describe the career of his hero, Dick Pruett, from his first flight to the present moment, as fighter pilot, then test pilot, and project engineer. Meanwhile all the space project experts are working desperately at Cape Kennedy in an attempt to save Pruett by putting up a Gemini capsule on a Titan rocket, with a single astronaut who can manoeuvre the capsule to pick up the marooned man. At the same time the' Russians, who have realised what is happening, put up a Vostok spacecraft

without making any announcement about it because they hope, quite naturally, to bring off a spectacular surprise rescue. It is a pity that events have overtaken the author on this point, for there is a lovely sketch of Mr Khrushchev being jovially mysterious at a gala party in Moscow. Both Vostok and Gemini are successfully launched and reach their target, and Pruett returns to earth after a co-operative effort. There are six appendices by way of a backup system, and Mr Caidin can easily be forgiven for a rather portentous approach to his cardboard hero for the sake of the speed and clarity of his writing about the actual machines and the art of flying them.

Meet in Darkness. By

Stephen

Gollancz. 216

This is a straightforward story of a kidnapping, and involves no expert detective work. Notwithstanding its deceptive simplicity it is suspensive enough to compel the reader to finish it at one sitting, and the climax is satisfactory and logical. Hugo Sandor is a director of industrial films. He has a lovely wife and four rather badlypaid assistants, one of whom, however, Dick Craig is loyally devoted to him. He also has two deadly enemies, but this is unknown to anyone until he is quietly kidnapped one night, and a note demanding a 250,000 dollar ransom is delivered at his home. Under Dick’s urgent direction Sandor’s wife and the four assistants pledge most of their possessions to find the money, only to have it stolen from the safe in which it has been lodged. Obviously one of them is the thief, and when Dick makes contact with the kidnappers at the appointed rendezvous he has to tel them that he has come empty-

(handed, only to be told to raise the sum again—or face dread consequences. The unwinding of the tangled skein is very exciting, and Stephen Ransome’s 19th book is as good as any of its predecessors.

Valparaiso. By

Nicolas.

F. R. E.

Gollancz. 192 pp.

Nicolas Freeling has won fame in a very short time as a writer of thrillers. Here, under a slightly different name, is his first straight novel. It is set in Porquerolles, a small island off the south coast of France, where Raymond Kapitan lives in his boat “Olivia”, and dreams of taking her on a dramatically long voyage, by way of Cape Horn, to the unknown but alluring port of Valparaiso. Raymond’s career to date has been that of an undramatic and chronically impoverished waster, but thanks to a legacy from an uncle he manages to live without working. Two new factors in his life, happening almost simultaneously, are to have fateful results. The first is the discovery that there is a rotten patch in “Olivia’s” hull, which must inevitably delay his projected voyage until he can find the money to have it repaired: and the second is the arrival in Porquerolles of Natalie Servaz, a rich and bored film actress, in idle search of romance. During the next few days it would seem that the desires and interests of both parties bid fair to be satisfied, but Natalie mistakes Raymond’s disclosure about the unseaworthiness of his boat for a bare-faced attempt to extort money from her, and snubs him unmercifully. This provokes him to a rash revenge which brings him into conflict with the police. It would be unfair to disclose more of the plot, but the book can be recommended, as <iuch for its local colour as i7or the bizarre characters it I portrays.

H.

Ransome.

pp.