SOME OF THE NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31256, 31 December 1966, Page 4

SOME OF THE NEW NOVELS

Incubus. By Giuseppe Bert*. Hodder and Stoughton. 388 pp.

With words and pages enough for three navels but enough ideas barely for one, Berto begins his great gush of words with a formidable thirty-line sentence. Here is a writer who is a complete antithesis to such pareddown writers as Waugh, Nabokov or his own fellowcountryman Alberto Moravia, and who seems by his catharsis to show us how little he has to offer. The book is a massive stream-of-consciousness account of a man’s relationships with his mother, sisters, mistresses and wife, and of his scornful nagging love for his dead father. In the large pages of close-packed words, conversation is rare and full-stops occur only every two or three pages, but sifting through the dross we come across arresting prose that makes us wish for an economy of writing that would show these pieces to better advantage. The book has been translated from the Italian by William Weaver, end has surprisingly won “The Viareggio Prize, 1964” and “The Campiello Prize, 1964.” Fifty-two year old Berto, is a graduate of the University of Padua, and fought in Abyssinia and North Africa. For two and a half years he was a prisoner of war in Texas, United States. Now he lives in Rome and devotes his time fully to writing.

The Funeral Was In Spain. By Edmund McGirr. Gollancz. 187 pp.

Kingston Rowton, the son of Samuel B. Rowton, a Texas millionaire and a miserable old devil to boot, was found dead at the bottom of a cliff in Spain, and Samuel suspects foul play. Samuel would. He hires a Mr Piron, a New York private detective, to investigate the matter and Mr Piron finds plenty of mud. The late Kingston, though short on morals—two cricket teams could easily be chosen from among his illegitimate children—had been a dashing type of buccaneer, free from the petty meanness of papa, his two brothers, his sister and her nasty daughter. Kingston had neatly left two gentlemen who had involved him in a shady financial deal thoroughly stuck with the liabilities while he went gaily off with the profits. They were chagrined with him. So it would appear was an illegitimate son who had threatened his life earlier and was now in Spain; so were several people whose properties would have depreciated in value if Kingston had had the opportunity to sell his beach property to speculative builders who would have increased the population of the neighbourhood but have lowered its selectivity. A group of gangsters and their crook doctor also aroused suspicion of having deprived the book of its only interesting character before it began. As for the rest of the cast, their trouble was too much money and too few principles. The book moves easily enough, but there is not much in it to lift it far above the ruck.

Make Much Of Time. By Patrick Davidson. Bigby. 349 pp.

Cut to half its length this could have been a moving story of young love, doomed to end in tragedy, and of the gradual emergence from heartbreak by the surviving partner. As it is,. more than half is devoted to the development of a mutual passion between 17-year-old Jim McComb, and Penda Carlson, a year his junior. Jim’s background is humble, but he is honest and clever, and his introduction to Dr. Carlson, a famous engineer and brilliant linguist, who is Penda’s guardian, marks a turning point in his life which sets him on the path to academic distinction in his native Sydney. A boy and girl engagement is permitted, but with their love unconsummated Penda dies as the result of an accident, and Jim’s deep sense of shock develops morbid implications. He goes to live with Dr. Carlson, and insists upon occupying Penda’s bedroom where he communes with his lost love, whose cremated ashes he preserves, together with all her personal belongings. There are suggestions of Victorian “longeurs” in this behaviour, but after meeting a gifted young women-composer and pianist Jim allows himself to indulge in some earthly delights. Discovering his unalterable spiritual fidelity to Penda, the girl not unnaturally spurns him, and it is not until he reaches the age of 23 that he achieves a sense of proportion which leads to his becoming at last an integrated adult A great deal of the book is given up to discussions about literature and the arts, from which no very penetrating comments emerge, and which are stimulated by a vast consumption of tea and coffee. There is perhaps a recognisable suggestion of the nineteenth century Russian novel in all this, but the central theme would be more effective if presented in a less prolix setting. No, John, No. By Cressida Lindsay. Bland. 185 pp.

The blurb is at pains to point out that the author is “at the centre of London’s youthful Bohemia,” and that “living on the WTong side of Portobello Road" is clearly something significant in English society, and that it is here Cressida Lindsay’s story is set. This rather selfconscious claim is unnecessary, as the characters are immediately authentic. The world they inhabit is bored and rootless, their approach to life a kind of amoral drift The novel catches the spirit, drifting along with little plot and apparently little purpose except as a character-study of the young heroine. Kate is an interesting character. At first she seems nothing but a bore, and boring lesbian, but gradually, as the pattern of her life develops, she shows that her complete lack of ambition hides what is in fact a capacity for pleasure in the mere living of life and appreciation of those around her. The other characters, too, are seldom attractive at first introduction, but they are real, and conveyed with

an intelligent sympathy. The style, too, wanders along with a deliberate lack of conventional virtues, but this is harder to forgive. The haphazard punctuation may catch the spirit of the novel’s world, but it is often difficult to follow, as are the frequent changes of tense and person. It would have been better to follow the story either from Kate’s point of view in the present tense, or in the normal third-person past tense. To mix the two is, ultimately, confusing. But Cressida Lindsay deserves more than pedantic criticism; her short and honest novel has many virtues.

The Man Who Was Magic. By Paul Gallico. Heinemann. 212 pp.

Paul Gallico himself calls this “a fable of innocence” providing the resume for this book. Had the words “for innocents” been added, however, both the book and the reader might have been given more sense of direction. The man who was magic is Adam, a man of almost supernatural simplicity, a worker of genuine magic as opposed to the ordinary illusory brand practised by the normal run of magicians and prestidigitators. He arrives with his talking dog at Mageia, the city of professional magicians. These see him as a threat to their livelihood for his magic not only outstrips theirs, but lays bare its poverty and shabbiness. In what appears to be a city of rogues his one ally is an unhappy child. His adventures, eventual rejection, and the subtle effects of his influence on the people of the city are the substance of the story. The impact of innocence on cynicism, of simplicity on deviousness, though a common theme, is not an unworthy one. It suffers somewhat from the obviousness of its treatment and the slow moving tempo of its action. The style is fittingly simple and many of the descriptions are Paul Gallico the storyteller at his best —as in his descriptions of the magicians’

city, “located somewhere west of east and just to the south of north and only a mile or so over the boundary of time, so that there was very little difference between yesterday, today and tomorrow.” In general, however, this novel lacks the appeal and pathos of a book like the “Snow Goose,” for his people are so stereotyped. Ironically, only Mopsy, the speaking dog who makes wry comments on events as they occur, seems to come across as a real human character. The book’s appeal in terms of reading public is problematic. It is fairy story too difficult for children, too obvious and childish for adults, so that by not catering specifically for one group or the other, it is likely to give satisfaction to neither. For that slender section of the reading community, the adult lover of fairy stories or the precocious juvenile, the book could prove pleasant enough reading.

The Sharemilkers. By N. D. Thompson. Paul. 185 pp.

Here is yet another contribution to the shelf of books about life on a farm in New Zealand. As its title implies, it is the tale of a young couple who take up sharemilking in order to save enough money for their own dairy farm. Before they finally are able to consider buying their own farm, they have worked under a variety of conditions, and have made the acquaintance of numerous people in different country communities. They learn much from their experiences and it is a happy moment when they find the place which will be their own. The plot is episodic, with the young couple, Shane and Dilyse, as the only factor bringing continuity Dilyse would surely describe herself as being “interested in people”, but her interest is unfortunately a shade shallow. This detracts from the book which would otherwise be a friendly, chatty novel.