NEW FROM PATRICK WHITE

Press, 15 March 1980, Page 17

NEW FROM PATRICK WHITE

The Twyborn Affair. By Patrick White. Cape, 1979. 432 pp. $16.50. The Australian novelist Patrick White has a strange and ■ powerful talent; a talent recognised by the award of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973 and demonstrated in many remarkable novels, including “Voss,” “The Eye of the Storm,” and “The Tree of Man.” The publication of a new novel by this writer must be an event of some moment in the literary world and “The Twyborn Affair” deserves attention.

It begins in St Mayeul in 1914 where a wealthy Australian is fascinated by a strange couple, Angelos Vatatzes and his romantic and striking mjstress, Eudoxia. Part two describes how after Angelos’ death a mysterious and brave young lieutenant, Eddie Twyborn, returns to

his native Australia to seek oblivion in hard toil on the land in a desolate part of New South Wales. The final scene is set in Chelsea where the astonishing Eadith Trist, supported by a dilettante peer, sets up an unusual brothel which becomes a fashionable cult. The novel ends in the chaos of the blitz on London during World War 11. Each part is a marvellous compound of comedy and compassion, of irony and pain. Together they form a sweeping and impressive narrative that, while wide-ranging, also digs deeply into the experience of human life. White, moreover, is prepared to dig in areas previously untouched or given only a surface scratching by other novelists, so that the reader is led to a new awareness of the complexity' of humanity. “The Twyborn Affair” is an important work of art by a writer whose mastery of the novel form is undisputed. It has a profound and disturbing effect upon the reader, and the last scenes of Eddie’s death in a raid while his mother waits for him are unforgettable in their evocation of hope amid disaster.—Margaret Quigley.