NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31724, 6 July 1968, Page 4

NEW FICTION

The Publie Image. By Muriel Spark. Macmillan. 192 pp.

From deceptively quiet beginnings Muriel Spark can build up tense situations of nerve-racking intensity. “The Public Image” is a splendidly conceived satire on the process which goes to build the career of a film-star. Annabel Christopher is not a very gifted actress who for some years has played small mousey parts as small, unimportant, mousey girls. Her husband, Frederick Christopher, is also an actor, not successful in his profession but more so as the writer of filmscripts for which he earns a modest competence, though most of the couple's income is derived from Annabel’s diligently - acquired earnings. Annabel and Frederick have lived together for twelve years, when an Italian producer discovers in Annabel some tricks of facial expression, combined with just enough acting talent, to enable him to build her up in a certain type of character —and she begins to emerge In Italian film circles as “The English Tiger-lady." She and Frederick, by now completely indifferent to each other, are made to appear as a devoted couple, whose private life is irradiated by an unrestrained passionate love. A corroding jealousy of his wife begins to consume Frederick, and leads him to plan a hideous revenge, which will effectively destroy her public image overnight The existence of the baby with which fate and Frederick have fortuitously provided Annabel has the effect of blunting the savagery of hi* scheme which 1* a model of malicious simplicity. But Frederick has reckoned without the power of mother-love, and its effects on Italian hearts. The baby helps to save poor Annabel's shattered image, and restores to her a proper sense of values. There is not a shade of sentiment in this portrayal trf a very ordinary girl, forced by a merciless publicity to assume a role which Is both false and preposterous.

The One Day of the Year. By Alan Seymour. Souvenir Pres*. 256 pp.

This novel was formerly a play written for the Adelaide International Festival of the Arts. The authorities rejected

the play which was finally accepted by the Australian Elizabethan Trust Later it was presented by the 8.8. C. Now the play Is read in a full length novel which draws the curtains back to reveal the celebration of Anzac Day in Australian life. The debate about the nature of the day is located between father and son, Alf and Hughie. Alf’s father Sam, who resides with the family, is an Anzac veteran. Alf fought in the Second World War. Hughie for most of his life, with his father, has attended each year the Anzac Parade in Sydney at Martin Place. Hughie, now grown up. is a university student and finds that he is becoming critical of the ritual of the yearly commemoration of Anzac. It is Hughie’s opinion the Anzac Day is but an excuse for many to be their worst selves. On the other hand for Alf it is a means by which he convinces himself that he is a person of worthy stature. The crisis occurs in the meeting between father and son at the ending of the day. The clash between the unified mind of the veterans ever anxious to maintain their tradition, and the critical iconoclastic attitude of the student mind occurs in the march down Pitt Street Blows are struck and hatred is manifest. This novel endeavours to give a description of a sensitive meeting point between the two generations. It does not offer any solution and finally leaves us with Hughie, now visiting the actual scenes of the battle with the Turks in an endeavour to make sense of an episode wMch history tends to see as an incredibly irresponsible military manoeuvre. There is no attempt to predict the future of the traditional celebrations but one senses the author’s judgment that they will not live for many years hence. Many readers are aware of student antipathy towards some time-honoured traditions, and this book can give some timely direction for an understanding of their present unrest without in any way giving any justification for it

How Hie Fishes Live. By Joel Lieber. W. H. Allen. 375 pp.

At what extremity of need does the civilised human animal lose grip on the principles of social and moral behaviour to which he has been taught to subscribe? The author puts this unanswerable question to his readers in a drama of considerable impact An American passenger ship has exploded in mid-ocean, and has sunk so rapidly that few survivors have managed to get away. One lifeboat with only 10 people on board stays afloat, but drifts for three weeks without food or water before being found, and the surviving six passengers rescued. None of these is in a desperate state, and the unbelievably grim reason for their comparative well-being is that two of their number had deliberately killed a third, and thereafter tiie six had consumed the victim’s body. The two killers are promptly Indicted on arrival in the United States on a charge of first degree murder, and the second half of the book is devoted to the trial, with two brilliant advocates arguing the case for and against the legal interpretation of murder, and the moral justification for killing a man in order that five other people may have the chance to live. The two killers are Isaac Wolfe—an ex-commando in the British army and later a Palestine terrorist, and Byron Holt, an advertising man who is also something of a playboy. Wolfe, the moving spirit in the affair, had suggested that all should cast lots for the role of human sacrifice, but this suggestion had been turned down by the others. Holt’s inherent weakness of character becomes apparent early in the trial and he goes to pieces, but Wolfe is totally unshaken in his testimony that his action had saved five lives, and that this was a logical justification. No point that could be put forward in vilifying the accused is omitted by the pro-

secution, white the defence, ignoring any kind of plea of temporary insanity caused by suffering, rests its case on Wolfe’s argument Two totally different levels of morality are advanced here, and while the general reader will inevitably be guided by his horror of cannibalism to come down on the side of the legal argument, it is worth asking himself whether he would deliberately abstain from the consumption of human flesh in circumstances of dire starvation and intolerable mental strain.

The Sea la Not Full. By Basil Freestone. Dobson. 221 PP-

In the latter part of the sixteenth century Portugal notwithstanding ita colonial possession*, wa» in dire financial straits, and the King, a mere youth entirely ruled by the Jesuita, was persuaded to send an army into South-East Africa to search for the fabulous treasures <rf Ophir. The expedition was to declare the sovereignty of Portugal over the Monomotapa, in which gold-mines were known to be situated, and convert, forcibly if necessary, the Inhabitants to Christianity. In command of the Portuguese forces was Dorn Francisco de Barreto, a nobleman of great magnificence and proved valour, who was also a deeply-religious man. But the “eminence grise” behind him was Father Monclaroa, a fanatical priest, answering only to the Pope and the King for the influence he meant to exert in the prosecution of the campaign Hi* interference, in the event, was disastrous and only a small remnant of the Portuguese host readied home alive. Father Mondaros's energies were devoted, less to the finding of treasure, than to avenge the death of certain missionaries who had been murdered a few years previously in the territory. Accordingly, he persuaded Barreto, against the latter's better judgment, to sail up the Zambesi in the wake of the murdered men, and kill their assassins, rather than make for Sofala, further south, where gold mines were known to exist. To press home his point he produced arguments to show that the route he wanted to pursue was actually on the way to Ophir. Sickness, from a fever-stricken

climate, combined with famine from lack of supplies, decimated the troops, and though Barreto managed to establish some kind of understanding with certain chief* to search for gold, his men were too debilitated to back up his arguments by force and the expedition had to be abandoned. Barreto himself died in torment, after solemnly calling down damnation on the tonsured head of hl* evil genius. The story has an authentic historical background, and the author describes, graphically, the morass of cruelty, superstition and intrigue which led to ita tragic end. A few years later Portugal was invaded by Philip of Spain, and ceased to be a sovereign state.