NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31548, 9 December 1967, Page 4

NEW FICTION

Another Man’s Role. By Ray Grover. Paul. 134 pp.

The author of this moving first novel has taken for his hero and anti-hero combined one of the socially submerged specimens of humanity who is Star-crossed from birth. The narrator, lan Craig, who is the son of a Presbyterian Minister in a small North Island town, has become a friend, after some early disagreements, with his schoolfellow, Con Bartlett—a boy thoroughly disliked by teachers and pupils alike. Conrad is physically powerful, intelligent and a bully. He is permanently dirty and dishevelled—and he smells. This unlikeable character has a code of honour, which is strictly individual, and from which he never wavers. The Bartlett parents are of a type which keep welfare workers busy, and Con’s young sister (whom he jealously protects) bears a permanent scar from stopping a missile which had been aimed at his father by his mother during one of their frequent altercations. Mrs Bartlett is an irreclaimable slut, and when her husband is killed in a truck accident, she point-blank refuses to allow her son to remain at school after his fifteenth birthday, though he is offered the opportunity to seek a higher education. From now onwards Con fights his singleminded war against society more rigorously than ever. He is sent to Borstal for pilfering books, and, after his release, volunteers for the army, and goes to Korea. His relentless fate pursues him, and causes him to kill another man in a quarrel. The author’s portrait of Con is full length. It neither glamorises the subject—who by birth and environment has never had a chance—nor condones his natural savagery. The other characters are equally wellobserved—and none of them are conventional types.

Dorinda. By Catherine McLeod. Pegasus Press. 140 pp.

This first novel by the Auckland writer Catherine McLeod is about the relationship between a precocious teen-age girl, Lisa, and her mother, the beautiful but enigmatic Dorinda. When her husband dies not long after returning from war-service, Dorinda has no trouble in attracting male admirers. In each case, however, after some initial encouragement, she becomes bafflingly aloof. To Lisa, who has incestuous feelings about her mother, Dorinda is both a goddess-like figure of voluptuous beauty, and a symbol of purity. To some extent her image of her mother is tarnished by sinister rumours of a halfbrother, but what in the end destroys Lisa’s faith in Dorinda is not evidence of adultery but a much more serious spiritual corruption stemming from her unnatural repressions. It is a promising theme, and the story begins well, but the author has insufficient skill to develop it completely. Within the narrokr range of Lisa’s adolescent emotions, she is convincing, but she never succeeds in making Dorinda as real for the reader as she is for Lisa. As a result, the climatic wedding scene, in which Dorinda makes her confession, is disappointingly banal.

One Magpie For Sorrow. By Norman B. Harvey. Whitcombe and Tombs. 190 pp.

In this novel Mr Harvey imagines a surprise invasion of New Zealand by the Chinese who seem bent not on conquests for gain but on the complete destruction of all cities, towns, farms and people. This improbable situation is the basic one in a novel the plot of which bristles with further minor improbabilities and coincidences. Apart from the rather macabre fascination of reading of the ruin of familiar places and the virtual

annihilation of New Zealand’s much-discussed defence system, there is little in this novel to engage the attention. At the beginning Mr Harvey divides the readers’ interest among far too many incidents and characters, many of whom appear for only one or two pages and then vanish. The reader is a good quarter of the way through the book before he can decide whose story is really being told. Moreover, it is difficult to decide how the story is being told, for the writer attacks the narrative from so many different angles that great mental agility is required from the reader to follow all the changes in the position of the author. There are few cliches avoided in the writing or in the plot (one woman is included in the party trekking through Fiordland, and we are not spared the expected love scene). The characters are wooden and the dialogue stilted. This is a book which may offer some excitement to those who can suspend disbelief entirely, but one which the discerning reader will do well to avoid. The Rich And The Damned. By Richard HimmeL Herbert Jenkins. 176 pp. The members of the Donnelly family of Chicago were rich, but to call them damned would be to flatter them. When the story opens the father of the family, a granite-carven millionaire, has just died. His daughter, Rourke, had for a long time been his efficient and close helper in controlling thq.

diverse business that pro: duced the family fortune. The other members of the family lacked the drive and skill required. Yet Donnelly did not bequeath a controlling interest to Rourke and the book is mainly concerned with the fight over who shall now rule.

Rourke calls in Johnny Maguire, a tough young lawyer, to straighten out matters between the members of the family, and to foil the financial sharks who scent a killing. Although Maguire hands out many a hard punch, the whole affair becomes dull for those of us who haven't quite so much money. The Fifth Defector. By Philip Jones. Heinemann. 202 pp. This agreeably told story la set in an Italian town on a northern shore of the Adriatic fairly close to the Dalmatian coast The British actingconsul, Charles Comerford, gives sanctuary to Zankov, a defecting member of a Russian trade delegation, suspected by his colleagues—and under the dose supervision of a couple of Russian hatchet-men belonging to the secret police. The “Bora,” a very strong and extremely cold wind, is blowing at the time bringing down the telegraph lines and playing old Harry with everyone’s nerves. Comerford is therefore cut off from instructions from London and has to improvise as situations arise. An old enemy in the diplomatic service arrives apparently with orders to take charge of Zankov! He is Prentice, whose dishonesty 18 years before had cast a cloud of suspicion on Comerford’s reputation in the diplomatic service. Neither Comerford nor his wife are prepared to trust Prentice and he, Cass, an English soldier of fortune living in the city, and Stanovic, a Yugoslavian in Russian pay, combine to capture Zankov and return him to Russia where hinted-at unpleasantnesses await him. Against the howling of the wind the struggle mounts with everincreasing tension ably and interestingly created.