When restraint breaks down

Press, 31 August 1985, Page 20

When restraint breaks down

Stamping Ground. By Maurice Leitch. Sphere Books, 1985. 209 pp. $11.95 (paperback). “Stamping Ground”, first published in 1975, is the work of a master story-teller, who can create a spell-binding tale from what might seem less than promising material. Maurice Leitch, winner of a Guardian Fiction Prize for “Poor Lazarus” and a Whitbread Prize for the novel, “Silver’s City,” paints in “Stamping Ground” a picture of life in and around an Antrim village one hot summer’s day in the 19505. The setting is idyllic, the people are real rather than heroic, and their activities, for the most part, unexceptional. Or so it seems. But behind the calm, civilised faces that the individuals present to the world are hidden the private emotions, the secret thoughts, the basic and sometimes base urges that shape their lives. Normal, mundane life continues while these are kept in check, but what happens when circumstances allow the restraints to be broken down? That story might have been unbearably sombre at the hand of another writer. But it becomes high — and often hilarious — entertainment, thanks to Maurice Leitch’s gift for comic writing. Readers will be grateful to Sphere Books for choosing to reissue “Stamping Ground” in a most attractive Abacus paperback. — John Hickey.