Novel from private pain

Press, 21 July 1984, Page 20

Novel from private pain

A Voice Through a Cloud. By Denton Welch. Penguin, 1983. 232 pp. $9.95 (paperback).

(Reviewed by

Joan Curry)

This is one of those autobiographical novels that may seem more significant to their authors than they do to the rest of us. Written to exorcise some S' ite pain, they can appear selfgent; more therapy than literature. On the other hand, they can sometimes zing with emotional integrity. This book does both. Denton Welch was 20 when he was hit by a car while he was riding his bicycle. He died 13 years later having endured much pain and illness as a result of this accident. He spent those 13 years writing and painting and left the manuscript of “A Voice Through a Cloud” unfinished beside his bed when he died. The book starts with the accident and describes the year or so that followed it, most of the time spent in hospitals and nursing homes.

In the first part of the book, the part dealing with the first days and weeks in hospital, Denton Welch uses sharp, emotional language. He describes the pain and fear, the depressing hospital surroundings and the indifferent, almost callous, treatment by the nurses, and he does it with the extravagance of a badly injured, very young, man. It is a highly coloured, but remarkedly controlled account of what it is really like to be smashed in a road accident and of what happens afterwards. And as though the immobility of his body freed his mind,

Denton Welch escapes into imaginative daydreams to minimise the long wastes of hospital days and nights, and to find some relief from his discomforts.

But as his injuries heal and mobility returns, he comes down to earth. The second part of the book tends to plod along, although his talent for intelligent observation is still apparent. It is possible that this half of the book might have been tightened up and polished if the author had lived to complete it There is no doubt that Denton Welsh was talented. The cover of this book, which is a reprint, shows a self-portrait which is stylishly executed. The world lost both a painter and a writer when this young man died.