NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30895, 30 October 1965, Page 4

NEW FICTION

The Needle’s Eye. By Errol Brathwaite. Collins. 320 pp. and Historical Notes. This is the second book of a trilogy the subject of which is the Maori wars of 100 years I ago; and by eschewing i romance, and false sentiment, the author has presented a credible story of those troublous times. In this tragic narrative he stresses the futility of war when waged between two peoples each of whom are playing out the j drama of life with a different j set of rules and incompatible ( values. The year in 1864, and the scene of the fighting, the Waikato, where the Maoris fight desperately to establish the recognition of their King. Major Williams, commander of “A” Troop of cavalry in the Colonial Defence Force, is sent with a small detachment to reconnoitre a Maori position at Rangiaowhia, and comes upon a village, Hairini. in which Maori and pakeha live peacefully side by side, ignoring the bitter issues of the war. Also in the village lives the half-mad religious fanatic, Dr. Harris, and at the time of the troops’ arrival he has outraged Maori feelings, by allowing a wounded warrior who has come to him for succour, to die. his wound untended. Moreover, the doctor has dishonoured the voting man’s corpse, and the Maoris have sworn to kill him. Always mindful of his own skin, Harris reports the presence of Williams and his men to the Maoris, and so promotes the tragedy which follows. Williams hastily makes a pact with the enemy to execute Harris by pakeha law, but in a brief court martial Harris is condemned to death only on the grounds that he has betrayed his com-

I patriots, though the Maoris 9 are led to believe he is paying i. the penalty for his crime against themselves. The f ruse fails, the uneasy truce is i broken and all hell breaks s loose in the peaceful little settlement. The details of the ? historical battles which take , place in the neighbourhood i' are given with admirable s ( clarity, and the mutual slaughter of two fundament- ■ ally decent factions indicates . to Williams that bravery, like . patriotism, is just not enough. . Many of the characters, as well as the actions are histor- ■ I ical, and the author has a fine [ ( sense of balance in assessing , I pakeha and Maori values. 1 Lucy. By Hester W. Chapman. ' Jonathan Cape. 382 pp. ( The historical novel in this . age is too often presented in ’ terms of modern realism. The 1 daily habits and customs of ; our forefathers are described i as if they had differed in no I way from our own, and the . approach to life of the 1 characters is apt to be that : of the twentieth century. The , noted historian Hester W. ; Chapman disdains these ' methods, and in a long and ! evocative novel keeps strictly ■ within the skin of the period. ; “Lucy” is a story of the ' Restoration theatre in which 1 the more noted players were ' the darlings of the common ’ people, and powerfully pat- ‘ ronised by the King and his 1 circle, but whose careers were > in perpetual jeopardy from ' unforeseen causes. For > example, an actor who had in • our parlance “brought down i the house” by his portrayal of ' a poltroon could (and did) • find himself hauled in front i of a tribunal and unmercifully flogged because, without I knowing it, he had taken off s some outraged nobleman. - Richard Nash, the greatest actor of his age, serving Charles II in the monarch’s own playhouse, was a man of some breeding and great sensibility. His love for Lucy Browne, a waif whom he had ! rescued from death in the ■ Plague year, her development t into an actress under his > tutelage, and the tragedy she : brought to both of them, is " the main theme of the book. » Lucy's truly British passion : for dogs as well as her > general flightiness and her t two marriages (the first of ' which proved to be a false i one) make of her a credible • character, but it is the picture of the era which really grips ■ the reader. Such personalities ■ as the wholly amoral Lady Maltravers (who engaged Nash as a lover in the same way that she might have hired a footman) and the wicked Earl of Lancaster, who was | both his patron and his evil genius, are the stuff of reality. Casual murders, and the frequent executions at Tyburn which provided free entertainment to the multitude, are dispassionately recorded, and it was Lucy’s inconvenient conversion to Catholicism during the Titus Oates witchhunt after Papists that caused the final tragedy. This is a j Book Society Choice, and well (deserves the distinction.