From new fiction and reprints

Press, 6 September 1980, Page 17

From new fiction and reprints

Man, Woman and Child. By Erich Segal. Granada, 1980. 216 pp. $15.95. Erich Segal’s first novel, "Love Story”, despite, or perhaps because of its unashamed sentimentality, was a huge popular success, both ,as a book and on the screen, (which one suspects was what it was really written for). The fleeting charm of sentimentality without any true sense or sentiment soon wears very thin. “Oliver’s Story” proved this and now- Segal’s third novel, “Man, Woman and Child”, piro vid es further unnecessary corroboration of it. The novel tells of a “truly happy American family”, the husband a professor, the wife an editor in a publishing firm and their two daughters. The marriage and home life envied by all is shattered when the husband learns that his one brief extra-marital affair has made him the father of a ninetyear-old French -boy, who is how 'alone in the world. The storv purports to show how out of the “unhappiness and the necessity to face reality .-.comes, a. new. maturity and compassion fort all concerned”. In fact situations and plot are. so contrived, characters are such cardboard stereotypes, and dialogue is so inanely sentimental that? nothing in the book, suggests the facing of reality. . , A long list: of favourable quotes, is included in the promoter’s letter which accompanies the book: “It tugs at the heartstrings”, “gentle and genuinely, touching”, “compulsive and unputdow- ; nable”. But,,“Man, .Woman and Child’’,; is nothing more-.than a slick arid;sentimental tear-jerker .which will probably have a circulation far beyond 4 its deserts., — Margaret Quigley, , ; ;

The Flowers of the Field. By Sarah Harrison. MacDonald and Jane's, 1980. 666 ppi $19.95. ?... ' Three girls live their lives in the country house of a ; middle-class English family.-Two of- thciri, are.; the-., daughters of the house. The other is a bright, ambitious . maid. .The First 7. World War " disrupts their Jives, but v. also brings all three independence aswell as pain and loneliness. Their • menfolk also go their different ways —to thb trenches, and in one case, to prison as a conscientious objector. The

war becomes the brutal crucible in which all are reformed or destroyed. Sarah Harrison’s descriptions of the horrors of trench -? warfare are shockingly vivid, and bring the tragedy and frightfulness of the “Great War” to life. But the characters are not swamped by the weight of history and horror, and “Flowers” is absorbing reading.—A. J. Petre. " How Far Can You Go? By David Lodge. Seeker and Warburg, 1980., 244 pp. $17.25. A small group of Roman Catholic undergraduates in 1952 come -together in work and play, united -by their religious background and their fumbling attempts to understand its restrictions. The book follows them through until the 19705, having fulfilled their various destinies as mothers and ' fathers, lovers, psychiatric patients, homosexuals, conformists and rebels. With some aspects of their belief still intact, the turning point has been . the ’ Papal “Humanae Vitae,” the pronouncement which included' no flexibility on contraception. : With new infants, including a mongol, appearing like clockwork from the rhythm methods of “control” and the climate of sexual experimentation in youth without guilt or consequences, the restlessnes of the now older generation becomes apparent. A pleasantly thoughtful novel, a little marred by a tendency of the author to preach support for his .-.'opposition to Roman Catholic ' Conservatism. — Ralf Unger.

Good as Gold. By Joseph Heller. Corgi, 1980. 464 pp. $5.85. .

. “Sit on the tack of ambition and you will surely rise,” an American millionaire tells Bruce Gold who is pursuing the conflicting aims of finding a safe ' job in the White House and writing a definitive book on the Jewish experience in America. Gold seems near to .political success. “The Administration will back you all the way until it has ''to,” he is told? This, is the wonky viewpoint of Heller’s acclaimed “Catch--22,” turned this time "oh American politics and Jewish family life. Gold the /scholar carries out research with

scissors and paste. His aphorism “nothing succeeds as planned” is taken up by a President who, while in office, is too bupy writing his memoirs to make any decisions. / “Good as Gold” has been- widely praised since parts of it began to appear in magazines four years ago. At times it succeeds as well as “Catch-22,” but for readers not steeped in American politics and Jewish humour, sections of “Good as Gold” are tedious. Now. in paperback, the book does not succeed as well as the author might have planned.—Naylor Hillary. The Last Convertible. By Anton Myrer. Corgi, 1980. 572 pp. $5.85 (paperback). “The Last Convertible” is a long drive down memory lane in a 1938 Packard Super Eight to the tunes of the pre-war swing bands as ‘ the ■narrator tries to explain to a neurotic young American hi.s parentage literally and, less successfully, metaphorically, ft is a heavily nostalgic story of the lives and unrequited loves of Harvard college friends bound together a little too tightly by the old school tie, and who felt they had too brief a time at the top with President Kennedy before his assasination and replacement .' by “conniving old men’.’ and old values. Above all, it is a long-winded tribute to the good old days and proof of the . selling power of these sentiments. — Barry Holland.