SOME OF THE NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31161, 10 September 1966, Page 4

SOME OF THE NEW NOVELS

The Serpent’s Egg. By Julia Birley. Geoffrey Bles. 223 pp.

At first glance this is just another pleasant unpretentious domestic novel, giving nothing and expecting nothing —you almost feel you've read it before. Upper middle-class family, with the requisite two children both in their teens, comfortably established in their open-plan home in a garden suburb of London. The mother finding fulfilment in clothes and over-elaborate dinner parties, and the father —and here the tempo changes, here at last is something we can get our teeth into. Stephen Knighton, the father, cannot find fulfilment, or anything like it. in his trips to the city, his well-padded managing-director's day, or his walks at home with the Corgi. For some time he has been running a rather unsuccessful local boys’ club, now, stepping right out of the groove, he begins to plan a youth project. (Watch For Project Five, his posters say), which involves turning some wasteland and three old warehouses into a Youth Centre, using the talent and time of twenty or so youths who profess to be interested. It is a shining vision. Knighton tells an influential friend whom he hopes to interest in the project, \“The forces of history are a, myth. Every trend of any importance was begun by a very i-.ew people, or even by one acting when the time was ripe.” I t Knighton’s case, it would unfortunately seem, the time 1 was not ripe, for after a fair enough beginning the project folds, but not before its initiator has gained some valuable self-knowledge. Knighton ■ readjusts his life, comes to better terms with his wife, and begins a new job as secretary-general for a Foundation, concerned with social work in prisons. He at least has found his metier. There are many touches of good comedy in the book. Lady Blenny, the Knighton’s aggressive, but worth-cultivat-ing neighbour, manages during a ten-minute drive to drop, “eleven names of important people who were her friends, from the editor of ‘The Times’ to a leading Russian scientist.” The House at San Silvano. By Guiseppe Dessi. Harvill. 159 pp.

This novel by the Sardinian writer, Dessi, creates astonishingly vividly the impression of a “little world” of its own. San Silvano is a small village on Sardinia and the book captures magnificently the solitude and strength of the Sardinian landscape and the timelessness of peasant life there. It is narrated by the central character, a young literary man who has returned from Florence to spend the summer at his boyhood home, and is concerned mainly with his present reactions to, and past memories of, his home and his elder sister. This sister, Elisa, brought up the two brothers but when they left for Italy she remained behind to marry a neighbouring landowner, a marriage the brothers still resent. During

: the summer he spends on Sardinia, partly with Elisa but mainly alone in their old home at San Silvano the narrator achieves a new maturity through his re-creation of his boyhood and his relationship with his sister. By the end of the novel he has come to a far deeper understanding of Elisa, her husband and his brother, Guilo. The novel is beautifully written with compassion yet without sentimentality, even in the last tragic pages, and the placid surface of the writing serves to emphasise the depth of ■ feeling often half hidden or revealed in minute detail. (The translation is by Isabel Quigly.

The Man Who Loved His Wife. By Vera Caspary.

W. H. Allen. 238 pp.

Vera Caspary has a welldeserved reputation as a writer of psychological thrillers, and her admirers will not be disappointed in this story of a vigorous man, struck down in middle-age by cancer of the larynx which has left him with a grotesque voice and an inferiority complex of such dimensions as to render him impotent. Before the disease smote him Fletcher G. Strode had been a self-made and successful business man, but now, because of his disability, he shuns all kind of human contact except with his wife. Elaine to whom he is devoted, and who loves him deeply in return. His inadequacy as a husband, however has led him into fantastic suspicions and jealousy which he confides to a diary. He keeps this book concealed from sight, and in it has built up a quite false picture of Elaine, in which she is being unfaithful to him and scheming for his death. During a visit of his daughter (by a previous marriage) and her husband Strode is found mysteriously dead in his bed. and the rest of the story is devoted to the machinations of the couple to obtain Strode’s fortune by pointing a suspicion of murder at his wife. Their accidental discovery of the diary strengthens their hand, but a surprise twist at the end gives the book a dramatic finish. Strode's reactions to a new and torturing turn in his life are adequately explained, but Elaine’s one act of infidelity to him, and its dire consequences smack slightly of contrivance. Murder Makes the Wheels Go Round. By Emma Lathen. Gollancz. 183 pp.

In this her fourth thriller, Emma Lathen’s investment banker, John Putnam Thatcher, of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, moves from Wall street to the automobile manufacturing industry in Detroit. Thatcher goes to investigate possibilities for investment in a big up-and-coming concern which has recently experienced the misfortune of having three of its leading executives imprisoned for short terms for violating pricefixing laws. He arrives at a time when Detroit hums with interest about the future of these men. Will they return to Michigan Motors, or quietly be “let go”? Of the three, only one man is thought likely to cause serious embarrassment to the firm’s plans,' and there is fear in some quarters that this individual is intent on causing personal distress to the person who “leaked” the information which sent the three to prison. When the returned prisoner is murdered and his body found in bizarre circumstances, fears of a different sort are aroused in several minds —until a masterthought of Thatcher’s is responsible for putting everything right. Emma Lathen could not fail to be entertaining; her style and treatment are a delight again. But some of her Detroit characters are not as convincing as those she finds in Wall street; it is still the world of very Big Business in which Miss Lathen places her characters, but one is inclined to wonder how several of the Detroit tycoons can possibly have got there. And dignified John Putnam Thatcher is rather too palpably pushed into affairs that are none of his business. In-

' deed, both he and Emma Lathen seem self-consciously aware that in this story Mr Thatcher is cast as a busybody. The Return. By Michel Droit Andre Duetsch, 352 pp.

Philippe Thierry, a young lawyer in Algeria, leaves that country after the declaration of independence, intending to stay in Paris until things have settled down and then go back. Like hundreds of others he feels that Algeria is his true home, the land of his birth; but unlike so many he has taken no part in the long vicious -struggle between Algerian F.L.N. fighters and O.A.S. men determined to keep Algeria French. In Paris, Thierry joins the practice of a liberal-minded advocate and makes a success [of his first case. This does not endear him to the other ex-Algerian lawyers in Paris, who have already tried to persuade him to join them in defending O.A.S. terrorists and been rebuffed by him There are threatening tele-* phone calls and notes. In spite! of this Thierry is finding Paris most agreeable after all' —in fact he feels that he has been regrafted on to his true roots at last, and this is con-1 firmed by a visit to Algiers, which no longer seems like home at all. But the confident prediction that his enemies at the bar will soon dwindle in number and the hatred will in time die naturally, is overset! by an unpredictable crisis. J Thierry holds to his course! both for friendship's sake] and for his own self-1 respect, and useless vio- ' lence explodes again. If there: were no more to the I book than the bare plot it I would still be worth reading, | for it is well-constructed, well-! written and grips the atten-i tion throughout. In addition] however Mr Droit shows genuine insight into the I characters and lives of his! cast, both men and women, and in particular expresses an unusual and cogent sympathy for some of the O.A.S. men. There is Perrot, who joined a commando because he was assured there would be no violence and it was his duty to save Algeria. Of a totally different type is Theo, a tough fighter with a long record of sabotage and murder. He knows the battle is lost and there is no point in continuing, but he will not give up because he regards himself as soldier under orders and must continue so! to keep his self-respect.: Though the setting and details of this story are French, the wider ideas expressed in it are relevant wherever colonists and sons of colonists may be struggling to maintain the status quo.

A Penny to Spend. By Edward Brown. Harrap. 297 pp.

This lightly-entertaining adventure story begins when Jeremy Churston, a Sydney schoolmaster, starts a European holiday and is given, through mistaken identity, a

| stolen file of nuclear research .documents. Jeremy, who (closely resembles Peter Brauvitch —the man to whom the stolen papers should have been given—is an amiable and simple fellow who would, if the book were filmed, be admirably played by Peter Sellers The book has some (thing of the atmosphere of (‘The Pink Panther" Although the file is safely recovered, the British security 1 people and their Spanish colleagues decide to use Jeremy’s likeness to Braus- ( vitch as a gimmick to uncover and dispose of a spy named Maurice de Berre—feeling that he was one who would (be improved by the more tightly disciplined life of I Purgatory, and that the affairs of Europe would run 1 more smoothly if he were sent there. To this end a group of secret service agents accompany Jeremy to Spain, and the Spanish police cooperate. The agents are a delightfully inconsequential bunch, but it soon appears that any one of them might be Maurice de Berre himself—or herself, as he was adept at impersonation. Jeremy, not knowing friend from foe, gets into many a merry pickle, but escapes them all by his own efforts or with timely succour, finding unsuspected but developing powers within his own character in doing so. This is a swift, pleasing, and fresh story that is enjoyable all the way.

I A Dandy in Aspic. By Derek Marlowe. Gollancz. 158 PP. I It is not stated at the begin- ( ning of this book that no resemblance to any member (of either the British or the (Russian security services will jbe found in it, but we hope (that this is true. Most of (them seem to be working for I both sides at once and are scarcely worth their pay | from either. A Russian, used ( by them solely as an assassin, has a high position and impeccable background in the British secret service, and is given the task of hunting himself. He doesn’t do it very well. Most of his British associates are frozen-faced and cryptic or are people who, on their proved records, should have been recognised as poor security risks. The Russians do little except murder their own men who are suspected by the other side. The only person who seems credibly drawn as a person is a girl, not a member of either organisation. In the interests of stern realism, the author makes her use once a rude little word. One’s belief in any part of this story could be expressed with another such.

Franks or no Franks, Oxford still cherishes genteel priorities. One college magazine notes with regret the deaths of “Mr Charles Hignett, formerly ■ fellow in ancient history: of H. E. Pollicott, formerly steward of the college; and of Greenaway, known to many generations of Hertford men as a senior scout of the college."