NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31239, 10 December 1966, Page 4

NEW FICTION

Nostalgia. By Genevieve Gennari. Hutchinson. 270 pp. This is a third novel by the talented French author who already has a considerable reputation in her own country, in Britain and in America. Miss Gennari takes as her narrator a young literary woman, Nathalie Elikof, who has never had the feeling of belonging to a family or tradition. As the novel opens she takes a position as governess to a girl of fifteen, Diane de Trabert, and goes to live at the family chateau. As the story progresses the reader watches with fascination the tremendous influence the de Traberts, their home and their customs have upon Nathalie and the difficulty she has throughout the rest of her life in freeing herself from their spell. One watches too the growth and development of Diane, her unwise first marriage, the realisation of her constant ambition to act and her gradual drawing to the one man she always loved. Their lost conversation in the epilogue is so searching and moving, “What rebirth have I given you?”, that it forces the reader both to think and feel. There is much in this novel to hold the attention, the picture of the de Traberts living in nostalgia at Availle, the description of literary circles in Paris, the tracing of the effect of different writers on Nathalie. Most of all however interest is sustained by the writing itself. From the first sentence (“There was a time when I began a book as if I were diving. I plunged in without question.’’) the reader is caught in the excitement of the creation of a novel and the capturing of a mood. If the rapid switches from past to present and vice versa prove a little disconcerting at first this is soon adjusted to and in the end is seen as a technique very well suited to the complex nostalgia Miss Gennari is attempting to define. Treacherous Road. By Simon Harvester. Jarrolds. 184 pp. That übiquitous Secret Service agent, Dorian Silk, who has already had many dangerous missions in the Middle East, has now embarked upon one to the Yemen during the civil war in progress there. To make his task more difficult he is teamed up on his journey with a man Who is supposedly a colleague, but who is in fact known to be a traitor, waiting his opportunity to slip off to Moscow. Consequently, the possibility of a stab in the back is as likely as a frontal assault in the game Silk has to play. The widow millionairess Fathiya Fahmy, who has been told off to betray him to a villainous Egyptian, needless to say falls for his charm when he visits her houseboat in Cairo, though he is well aware that she is asking him “the wrong questions.” But it is when he and the traitor, Gray, both disguised as Arabs —set off to Hodeida to visit his friend, Gordon, that the excitement begins to mount. Gordon, also known as Wahad Omran, is absent, but his two faithful servants, and a girl of 14 whom he has rescued from a massacre by Egyptian troops, make the pair welcome. The girl, Hagah, proves to be another embarrassment, for, when he finds the murdered body of Gordon, some miles up the country, she fasten upon Silk with trusting adoration. Having the flair of all secret agents (especially those who survive from volume to volume) for killing his enemies with unerring swiftness, Silk disposes of Gordon’s assassin, and his own renegade companion in a

matter of hours, and returns triumphantly to the warm, if temporary embraces of Madame Fahmy, before taking off for a less dangerous clime. Simon Harvester has a gift for amusing dialogue, and his admirers will no doubt greet the large number of his friends mentioned in this book as old acquaintances. The Loose Screw. By Gerald Hammond. Gollancz. 197 PPThe author's first book, “Fred in Situ,” was an enjoyable one, and this one should be a greater success. Again it is a story with a motor-racing background and much of the action takes place during a motor-rally whose course round England and Scotland has been set by someone of fiendishly-twisted ingenuity. An intending competitor, Stewart Kearns, was killed in a smash before the race, and the circumstances were suspicious. They smelled, rightly as it turned out, of monkey business. The heroine of the story, Jacqueline, acts as navigator in the race to the cousin of the dead man. As the race progresses suspicion of him mounts fiercely, although how he could have arranged his wealthy cousin’s accident remains a mystery and not much action can be taken. Jacqueline's mother, a hard-bitten old dragon but an excellent driver, is also a competitor in the race. Adventures on the road, converging lines of detection, and the general excitement of the race drive through the book with speed and roar. But murder rides along, too, and could strike again anywhere.

lit very nearty does st the end of the race, when an ! even more gruelling chase ensues. This is a book safely to be recommended to ail who are interested in cars, and they will find friends in the well-created characters. Reunion. By John Green. Gollancz. 160 p.p. The narrator of this story, which is told in the first person, is Frankie, the 19-year-old stepson of a fire-eating i ex-soldier who treats him like dirt after his point blank refusal to become a professional boxer. The “old man,” always referred to as such, runs a cafe in the military station of Millbrook in Wales, and Frankie, disgraced and bullied, has a dull job with the local council, and a squalid one at home doing unpaid chores. The book covers the happenings of one week-end during which the old man and his friend Sam Wise take part in a regimental reunion, some of which is open to younger friends and relations of the participants. For poor Frankie the week-end spells one disaster after another. He gets uncomfortably drunk, becomes involved in fights which are not of his making, and lays out his step-brother (whom he loathes) badly enough to necessitate hospital treatment. Sam alone seems to understand him, and tries to bridge the emotional gap between step-father and stepson, but to no avail. On Sam's departure Frankie's world falls to pieces. The author is particularly clever at expressing the adolescent viewpoint