NEW FICTION

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32903, 29 April 1972, Page 10

NEW FICTION

Strange Meeting. By Susan Hill. Hamish Hamilton. 224 pp. To find such a book written by an old soldier would not be surprising, but Susan Hill is only 30 (with five other novels, a book of short stories and the 1971 Somerset Maugham Award to her credit). Her story of two officers caught in the organised mayhem of the First World War is written with the quiet assurance and chilling eye for detail of someone who saw it all happen. The "strange meeting” takes place at an infantry battalion rest-camp, in a sprawling French farmhouse, 20 miles behind the lines where the guns can hardly be heard. John Hilliard, reserved and unhappy, returns from sick-leave in England with his correct middle-class family, to find he is sharing his quarters in a narrow apple-loft with a newly-arrived officer called David Barton. It is the beginning of a richly satisfying friendship, complementary and complete, and as they and their men move steadily nearer the battle area, with living—and dying-condi-tions rapidly worsening, the affection between them burgeons. John Hilliard has only the loveless Fortnum and Mason delicacies sent by his mother to share with his friend, but the impulsive kind-hearted David draws John into the warm circle of his large family, through letters (David’s mother writes to her son’s friend and he to her), and through lengthy exuberant descriptions of the fun the Bartons have as a family. In the support trenches, playing the battalion gramaphone and declaiming about “ignorant armies that clash by night,” Barton displays an endearing optimism that his friend realises must soon be quenched. This is a gentle story in which the oldfashioned ideals of loyalty and honour, so scantly regarded in much of today’s writing, are upheld, and through which the biblical love of David and Jonathon runs as a leit-motiv.

The Killing of Richard 111. By Robert Farrington. Chatto and Windus. 287 pp.

This is good period stuff and the reviewer of historical novels has reason to be grateful to the author for keeping consistently within the framework of credulity in his study of one of the most violent eras in English history. He does not stray into such common irrelevancies as presenting twentieth century viewpoints and behavioui within a medieval setting, and his descriptions of the casual murders, filthy living conditions of the time, and that great traffic artery, the Thames, are all completely convincing. The story covers the two years of Richard Ill’s reign, the hero being Henry Morane, privy clerk to the King’s Secretary, John Kendall. This able young man is entrusted with a mission to Brittany armed with a large bribe wherewith to secure the person of Henry Tudor, Duke of Richmond—destined to become King Henry VII. Treachery causes the

mission to fail, and Morane and his light-of-love, Matilda, find themselves in a dangerous quandary and the targets of enmity to a powerful nobleman Sir William Stanley. Consequently, they take flight by boat to Kingstone (Kingston on Thames) to seek refuge with Matilda’s married sister. While Matilda remains in hiding Morane embarks once more on delicate detective work in the endeavour to find out which of his nominal supporters the King can trust. Finally, we are shown what happened at the battle of Bosworth which was to end the Yorkist dynasty. The picture of Richard 111, though a trifle nebulous, is interesting in that it takes a middle line between the double-dyed villain portrayed by that tactful Tudor playwright William Shakespeare, and the views of certain modem historians who exonerate him from all his imagined sins. The murder of his nephews in the Tower are ascribed to the machinations of Buckingham, and the King emerges as a delicate, rather sombre personality endowed, given the nature of the times, with the elements of justice and mercy. The author has done much reasearch of the period, and has written a noteworthy novel as a result.

The Fenokee Project. By Roy Lewis. Collins. 191 pp.

This is an excellently presented story in which a complicated plot implacably unfolds, bringing sharp action and strong emergence of the characters clearly forth. Ben South, a young Canadian engineer who was making a good career for himself, was greviously upset when his wife was killed in a motor accident, particularly as his business interests had caused him to be somewhat neglectful of her. He gave up his Canadian interests and went to England where he and a partner secured an important contract for building a chain of hotels. Just at this time he received a letter from an unknown woman suggesting that his wife’s death was not the accident it appeared. He did not believe this, but it worried him and took his mind off the imemdiate tasks. His partner suggested that he go to Canada and straighten everything out. When he got there, his correspondent had had a stroke from which she died without being able to speak to him. Investigations showed that there had been a lot of bribery and withholding information at the time of his wife’s death, all seemingly coming from a wealthy contractor who was building a series of hydro-electric stations known as the Fenokee Project. The bribery was to protect his dead son’s reputation. South, in spite of warnings, pressed on with his investigations and nearly lost his life and did lose his hotel contracts in England. However, he still fought and eventually won in an exciting climax on top of one of the dams in the Fenokee Project This story is well above the average in its telling.