Self-destructing royalty

Press, 16 December 1978, Page 17

Self-destructing royalty

Palace Without Chairs. By Brigid Brophy. Hamish Hamilton. 295 pp. $11.95. Brigid Brophy has written a black satire about self-destructing royalty. Queen Victoria would not have been amused. As well as questioning the monarchy, Miss Brophy writes of the generation gap where' the values of parents are considered childish by their children, of the irrelevance of tradition to a younger generation, and of the different outcome in reality to the palatial visions of dreamers. Miss Brophy conjures up memorable characters in a quaint kingdom near Albania — a kingdom she creates colourfully and then tears down. Her royal family comprises a stuffy and huffy king with an attention-getting device of pretending to be near death, and who finally wears this too thin; a queen who is preoccupied with Greek and pigeons; a “butch” daughter whose mind is on birds of a different feather and who turns out to be the heroine with her straight-forward outlook; and four sons: dropping-out Ulrich, dutiful Balthasar, charming Sempronius, and weird Urban. The king’s search for a successor to the throne, and Miss Brophy’s progressive elimination of each possibility, makes up the book’s main story, but she has opportunities along the way to turn her acid touch on several targets. Bureaucracy takes a hard time as Balthasar tries to solve a

symbolic palace chairs problem; the author dares to laugh at trade unions, sends up communist plotting, parodies politicians and psychiatrists, and crisply roasts journalists. Miss Brophy also has kind words to say — for writers and their rights, for animals, for homosexuals, for the need for the language to be used properly, for vegetarianism and atheism. These likes and dislikes are woven cleverly into a splendid satire.—BAßßY HOLLAND.