NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 4

NEW FICTION

The By Michael Rumaker. Macdonald. M2 PP-

This is a first novel by the American author of a book of short stories which won enthusiastic receptions from many reviewers Many of the qualities which made the stories in “Exit 3” so memorable are present again in this longer work. One notes with regret only the absence of brevity. The points are hammered home rather repetitively and the book would be improved by some judicious pruning. The first chapter entitled “The Morning Glory” was originally published by itself and it carries in miniature the whole theme and tone of the novel; the fragile hope, its seeming destruction and its redemption through human contact. Jim, the central character is, at the beginning, preparing to leave the mental hospital where he has been for two years and the story traces his gradual rehabilitation through his relationship with his doctor and the two girls. The first, Eiko, a Japanese. has immense problems herself and the contact fails, but in his association with Alice, Jim finds himself adequate and the book ends on a moving note of hope and refound confidence. The author’s ability as a writer precludes any descent into triteness. Mr Rumaker has an almost uncanny ability to catch the rhythm and idiom of contemporary speech and the dialogue thus achieves a rare naturalness. The same may also be said of the characters with the possible exception of Eiko. Jim himself is portrayed with an insight and compassion which will move most readers to share his swift reactions to things and people around him. “The Butterfly,” because of its acceptance of despair and defeat, speaks, perhaps unusually for a modern novel but most welcomingly, of the possibility of a meaningful and beautiful life.

Elephant Across Border. By Colin Burke. Collins. 255 pp.

This is a story of a safari, tn Mozambique—a safari complicated. not by the dangers of the pursuit, but by the characters of those who take part in it Mike Hendry is a hunter of repute, and he has become friendly with Joe Lorena, an American tycoon who, accompanied by his wife and daughter, has completed a photographic safari with Mike’s help. Then a telegram comes for Hendry which puts him in a black mood. It tells him that an elephant has crossed the border from Kruger National Park into Mozambique—and can therefore be shot without penalty. The writer of the telegram is a wealthy Englishman called Allard, and Mike, who has worked for him before, dislikes him on several counts. But the hunter is hard up and knows that he must accept Allard’s instruction to make the necessary arrangements for the proposed safari. The elephant, a rogue male, is not unknown to Mike. It is 70 years old and has the largest tusks to be found in Africa, but Hendry sets about his work without enthusiasm. Then Joe Lorenz poses a difficulty. He is madly keen to be in on this venture so that he can photograph the big beast. He hires a helicopter at enormous expense in order to persuade Allard to take him on the expedition—a difficult matter, but one he manages to bring off in the face of a very cold assent. The hunt is mounted, but another Englishman becomes involved, with the intention of putting -a span-

I ner in the works. Major Murray has been a game conservator and loves this old elephant, but being unable to stop the hunt he uses his bush skill to try to drive the animal back to the game reserve from which it has strayed. Feelings begin to erupt at boiling point, with mutual enmities no longer disguised when the denouement of a most unusual safari Is reached. This is a first novel of unusual ability by a writer fully conversant with his subject

The Tigers are Hungry. By Charles Early. Rapp and Whiting. 256 pp.

After thirteen years in a Russian prison. Captain Peter Haven of the American Air Force was rescued and brought back to health by a group of Russians planning a coup d’etat Haven had been captured after a bombing raid in Korea, and had resisted attempts to make him confess that he had been engaged in germ warfare. When rescued he found that his principal questioner, Chorapin, had been able to fake television interviews in which it appeared that Haven had indeed confessed: and, for that reason. Haven had long been regarded as a traitor by the Western Powers. Chorapin had been able to do this because of a dose physical resemblance between Haven and himself. Now Haven’s rescuers wished to use this resemblance to enable Haven to kill Chorapin in revenge and then to carry on the deception by Haven’s defecting to the West as Chorapin, thus causing embarrassment to the Russian Government. The first part of the plot goes reasonably smoothly and Haven is'smuggled into Italy where Chorapin himself was supposed to have gone on a secret mission involving the assassination of another agent and one or two other pieces of violent unpleasantness. Matters then, however, become very involved with plot ■ and counter-plot weaving | a pretty pattern. Mr Early 1 knows Italy well, and plotters’ meetings in famous galleries, adventures in the Forum, and on the Cupola at St Peter’s, make the Roman part of the book come vividly to life; and there is a macabre adventure on the rim of the erater of Vesuvius in the midst of a storm. The characters in the book are well drawn and the suspense never flags. It is an unusual and entertaining book.

Sons of The Wolf. By Barbara Michaels. Herbert Jenkins. 265 pp.

Barbara Michaels can write a spine-chilling Victorian thriller with the best, though she has not quite done her homework about the English setting—York is not 400 miles from London, but 194, crocuses, even in northern dimes, flower long before the middle of May; the word “Junior” as a slang diminutive is never used. In “Sons Of The Wolf” we have some really splendid villainy and heroism. Two orphan cousins—Harriet (19) and Ada (17) are, on the death of the grandmother with whom they lived, offered a home and protection by a relative, Mr Wolfson, of Abbey Manor, Yorkshire. Ada has inherited all her grandmother’s wealth, which seems a little unfair to Harriet, who gets only a workbox out of the estate, but as the latter has the stronger character, and the younger girl is devoted to her she has no fear for the future. Mr Wolfson proves to be charming, < though a cripple, confined to live in a wheel chair, with two ferocious wolf-hounds for constant

company. He has two sons— Francis, a budding doctor, and Julian, a dreamy, artistic type of young man. It soon becomes clear that both are laying siege to the heart of the lovely Ada, but she has already lost it to a handsome groom, of gipsy origin. Mr Wolfson, himself, seems much attached to Harriet who carefully records the daily doings of the household in her diary, which is the source of the story. As time goes on it becomes clear that none of the Wolfsons are quite what they seem to be, and by an ingenious twist in the plot we see why. The book ends in a blaze of melodrama, from which, however, both girls emerge unscathed. Miss Michaels is clever in maintaining the Victorian idioms of expression—in spite of occasional and no doubt unconscious Americanisms-

“Vac.” By Paul Ableman. Gollanez. 158 pp.

“Vac," we are told by the narrator, refers to two things: it indicates “vacuum,” the emotional state he feels when his marriage founders after 12 years, and it is short for “vacation.” The blurb, which is an anxious a piece of selfjustification as is ever likely to wrap up a book, explains that vacation signifies "an emptying, a moving away, a withdrawal from responsibility and participation.” In other words, the hero is wounded by his wife’s desertion and is not sure what to do next. This event is not the trauma that the author’s gratuitous semantics like to suggest, for the essence of the hero’s personality was that he had always felt free to carry on quite pointless extra-marital affairs. It is not easy to sympathise with the gyrations of his psyche. The whole story, in fact, reeks of self-indulgence. The humour is not ironic as much as smart-alecky, and what pathos there might be in the hero’s situation is lost amid the confusions of the prose. There are good moments scattered about, but as with so many recent English novels, the shape of the book is too loose for them to become meaningful.

Before Summer. By Daphne Brawn. Dent. 185 pp.

This sardonic little trifle concerns the disasters attending the marriage of a young Irish girl to a handsome playwright, who has had one success but seems unlikely to follow it up. Morris and Naomi Ryan live in one at the sleazier parts of Pimlico, and number among their friends a couples of members of a half-crazy religious sect, and an English girl with a West Indian husband and three children. The Ryans are on their beam-ends financially, and Morris keeps urging his wife to find some paid work while he sits at home waiting for literary inspiration. Lady Lloyd-Jones, rich, elderly and charitable comes to their rescue and provides Naomi with a secretarial post; and her son, Calder, gives Morris a sinecure of a job in a film outfit of which he is the proprietor. The reason for Calder’s kindly gesture is, however, not disinterested, and his association with his handsome protegee soon becomes evident to the latter’s wife. The resolving of this difficult situation is plausible enough, and Daphne Brawn has a discerning eye for the problems of London in the 'fifties, but she seems at times a little muddled about the complexities of a homosexual relationship and the plot is not wholly convincing. . This may be explained in part by the fact that she took four years to write the book.