Campion and Sargeson

Press, 25 August 1979, Page 17

Campion and Sargeson

Tandem: The Chain, by Edith Campion; En Route, by Frank Sargeson. A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1979. 108 pp. $9.50. (Reviewed by Diane Prout) This is a publishing venture in which two mini-novels, each bv authors well-known in their own right, appear together for reasons " of publishing economics. Frank Sargeson with gentlemanly consideration has allowed the lady precedence. Edith Campion’s story “The Chain” is a gruesome and macabre tale based on a newspaper item from the United States, a facsimile of which prefaces the story, in which a man was discovered starved to death after being chained to a pine tree by persons unknown. The writer’s imagination has been fired to re-create the man’s ordeal, his struggle to stave off his inevitable death, by eating roots and insects, and to piece together the fragments of his past life through interior monologue. The setting of this compulsively readable tale has been changed from Florida to the New Zealand bush. Instead of palmetto leaves the victim chews slugs, worms and woodlice with a native pigeon thrown in as a bonus. The story charts Murray Scott’s slow

disintegration. More anti-hero than anything, he is seen only as a victim of Fate. There is nothing to suggest that the situation is a form of punishment or retribution for past wrong doings. The cause of his bizarre plight is inexplicable, his tormentors apparently motiveless. “En Route” is a refreshing contrast. It is a modern pastoral comedy written by the Old Master in a rollicking, inimitable style. It describes how two middle-aged women, one a retired school teacher, the other her sprightly German friend, set out to captivate and disarm the bachelor farmers they meet on travels round “Enzed”. Self-professed women’s libbers, they work themselves into some highly farcical and improbable situations, not the least of which is sharing for a night an enormous double bed with their host, who lest there be any suspicion of improper nocturnal activities, makes a novel bed-divider filled with sharp and nobbly odds and ends. The piece is further complicated by the arrival of the German friend's extremely nubile daughter as a potential rival. Mother and daughter are each happily accommodated for a while, but the pastoral revels are short-lived and the three women, alas, return once more to the city.