NEW FICTION LIST

Press, Issue 33845, 17 May 1975, Page 10

NEW FICTION LIST

The Leavetaking. By John McGahern. Faber and Faber.- 195 pp. N.Z. price $5.90.

“The Leavetaking” is a memorable novel, well-constructed and wellwritten by an author who reveals the bitterness and bigotry in his beloved country — Ireland — with a compassion and a tired resignation which are more moving and effective than anger. “The book opens with a teacher pacing the concrete playground of a Dublin school among the games, the squabbles, the miling bodies and the litter. When he meets the parish priest at eight that night he will be dismissed because of his marriage -to an American divorcee.

The teacher moves through his last day of school ritual, retracing in his memory the events through the years which have led to this leavetaking from the school, his country and his past. It is a simple enough device, but the constant return to the school day provides both a firm shape for the novel, and a lively contrast to the teacher’s memories of childhood, his mother’s death, his first love affair, and his year’s leave in London.

The simple story is beautifully told in a graceful prose which moves easily and fluently. John McGahern has a perceptive eye for details which can se L the mood of a scene more vividly

than much description. Such details, like all aspects of this novel, are carefully controlled so everything works towards a unity of theme and effect.

The Double Snare. By Rosemary Harns. Faber and Faber. 237 pp. N.Z price $6.65.

Rosemary Harris has already produced two successful suspense thrillers, “All My Enemies” and “The Nice Girl’s Story”. Her third can onlv add to her growing reputation in this field.

The opening in an Italian hospital where a nameless girl struggles to regain her memory after a car accident arrests attention immediately. The first chapter is memorable for the heroine’s barely suppressed terror as she searches the blankness of her mind for clues to her identity. Once she is claimed as Giulia Carminotti by a seemingly devoted aunt the tension slackens, and although it is gradually built up again, the ending is in no way as effective as the beginning for it tends towards the melodramatic.

The solution to the girl’s problem is. of course, not as simple as the aunt’s appearance would suggest, and the story moves rapidly and excitingly through a series of intriguing twists. It is marred only by a rather excessive use of coincidence.