FROM THE NEW FICTION LISTS

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31653, 13 April 1968, Page 4

FROM THE NEW FICTION LISTS

The Wind Shifts. By Alan Sharp. Michael Joseph. 349 pp..

All the best characteristics of this young writer have been confirmed in this novel, and the less attractive aspects of his work have been mellowed. One of the ugliest qualities of his first book, “A Green Tree in Gedde,” was Sharp’s preoccupation with a variety of obscure and revolting sexual deviations. There is still a marked predilection for imagery concerned with the two areas of sex and garbage. But now that the author’s talent has been acknowledged, this is far less obtrusive. More important, in this book, the second of a trilogy, the brilliance of the writing cannot fail to impress. Alan Sharp’s talent is undeniably tremendous. He knows his erratic, variegated characters to their very backbones, and the reader follows the workings of their minds in the most intimate and sympathetic detail. One has the impression of genuinely and totally indentifying with each character in turn—Moseby, Sammy, Helen, Cuffee, Ruth, Harry Gibbon and Meriel Rose —a stimulating experience which shows unforgettably how far most authors fall short of this aim. Not only do the thoughts of each character enter our own heads—but they enter with such a realistic rhythm, and sequence, and variety. We realise that these characters, like real people, do not simply think logical i or practical thoughts, they are invaded by memories, feelings, impulses, impressions, sentiments, puns, associations, resolutions, notions, reveries, and prophesies —all of which follow one another without any semblance of logic, yet in a sequence which seems right and inevitable. Of course, the minds of the few chief characters, each of which we enter in turn, are hardly run-of-the-mill, common or garden minds, but reflections of Alan Sharp’s

own acutely observant and subtle intelligence. His prose sparkles with originality, but an even greater quality of his work is that he can communicate with warmth. It is so easy for the brilliant observer to be bitchy, but Alan Sharp is consistently affectionate towards even his most unlovely characters, in spite of an ever present wry humour. His greatest fault is as large as his genius, and is probably a calculated one. Although there is certainly a reasonably prominent plot, one simply cannot remember anything but the vaguest outline a week or two after reading the book. Only two or three details about the development of events remain in the mind —although other readers may find that they have a more retentive memory than this reviewer, of course. The plot, adequately interesting and fast moving, is overwhelmed by phrases and characters. Because of this, it is a strange experience to read "The Wind Shifts,” but a most rewarding one nevertheless. Man Out of Mind. By Peter Bates. Whitcombe and Tombs. 191 pp. Although the setting is in New Zealand, in a city called Tasman which could be Wellington, the story is not dependent on locale. It tells of Michael Howe returning from Australia where he had been practically exiled from home and from any control in a large road-making and bridge-building business by a domineering father of the self-made-man type. Michael returned on his father’s death to take over his inheritance and, determining to make the firm take a rapid plunge forward, he obtained, through price cutting, a contract for building a road through difficult country in a very short time. He and his young Australian wife had become estranged: he found that his father had left a letter to his lawyers instructing them to alter his will giving Douglas Rimmer, the firm’s senior engineer, and Albert Motu, the clerk of works and a splendid type of Maori, equal shares with Michael in control of the business; this letter he destroyed; a road accident involving a collision between a bus and a piece of the firm’s heavy equipment caused the death of several people and the prosecution of the driver of the equipment, and this led to labour troubles with the workmen; and to all this the chump had to get himself involved with his secretray in monkey rather than company business. Added to this there was a flood which washed away a bridge and held up progress on the new job; and Michael found enough trouble to make any kiwi go into a moult. How he came out of it and learned much in the doing makes a very good story for which the author merits high commendation. Second-hand Persons. By William Vincent Burgess. Seeker and Warburg. 182 PP. The setting for Mr Burgess’s macabre little tale is Rainwood, once a luxurious country house, now an efficient but depressing Old Men’s Home. We see the action mainly through the eyes of the recently-appointed, matron, Molly Milne, fortyish and neurotic with an estranged husband and teen-age son in Australia, who fancies herself in love with the Home's young cook, David. He, however, has other ideas and turns out to be a homosexual—no surprise to any reader of today’s

novels, where a character with such tendencies seems to be “de rigueur." Molly finds frequent excuses to visit the kitchen during the day, where she and David engage in verbal warfare over the heads of David’s male visitors. There are over forty old men in the Home, but we meet only half a dozen. The presence of the rest in the background is cleverly suggested. Childish in their sudden hates and illogical fancies, the old men are dignified by the pitiful ailments of age and their nearness to death. They totter off on walks in the grounds, sit musing in the sun, or tell Molly Milne—whom they all dislike—their latest symptoms and worries. All the book’s characters are slightly peculiar, indulging in pages of heart-searching and selfjustification. There are numerous lengthy and inapposite flashbacks, which tend to deflect and slow the story’s action. The conversation of the unprepossessing David is lavishly larded with fourletter words, which certainly extends our picture of him, but becomes tediously repetitive after a while. But in spite of these faults the book holds interest, and is at its best in the accounts of the doings of the two friends, Mr Lavender and the ailing Mr Berg. The finale comes with the violent and dramatic death of one of the old men. The Straw Umbrella. By Dana Faralla. Gollancz. 223 pp. A strange, dignified, pastoral society in the remote hills of Ethiopia, where life today still has much in common with that of the Biblical tribes, provides a conflict between Christian and pagan beliefs in another deceptively simple, but skilfully-written novel from Miss Faralla. The story goes through all the main festivals in the Coptic Church in the year in which young Tesfaye, a shepherd boy, begins his studies at the church school under his soulfather, the priest. In Tesfaye are reflected the inconsistencies .of a Christian community which still fears evil spirits and celebrates physically violent pagan festivals as enthusiastically as Christian ones, with some of the latter being more closely related to the sun rituals of ancient times than the priests are willing to admit. The author has already proved herself mistress of the art of evoking scenery, characterisation and language—in her latest novel she has plucked out a remote corner of the globe and presented it to a busy world with authenticity, simplicity and charm. Getting Straight. By Ken Kolb. Barrie & Rockcliff. 205 pp. If there is no truth in the rumour that Ken Kolb is the pen name of a writing team of Norman Mailer and William Buckley, there is certainly a similarity with how they write and what they write about in Ken Kolb’s book. The setting is the twentieth century American brand of a Rabelasian world —nothing kind or genteel, rather a human conglomerate in the megalopolis of noise, smells, drug addicts, fanatics, loud-mouthed commercial cutthroats. The chief character wants to “go straight” and find a purpose in life, but is beset with futility under the shadow of “the bomb” which he expects to be exploded over a world dominated by race prejudice, greed, leukaemia and general stupidity. He

really hopes to see God, but also to make a million dollars. Between times his frustrations temporarily vanish in an outlet of spectacular copulation. The author gives an amusingly satirical treatment of people lecturing and studying in a College of Education where there is lipservice to the integrity of education and the virtues required of a young teacher in training. According to the jacket blurb it could be in the University of California. With sustained tempo of life among students and faculty, shrewd caricature, cynicism, much humour, this novel on a state of moral disorder is of considerable merit.