RECENT BOOKS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 123, 26 May 1945, Page 9

RECENT BOOKS

ONE OF THE BEST

"A BELL FOR ADANO"

Described on the jacket as "one of the two most famous novels published in America since the outbreak of the war," John Hersey's "A Bell for Adano" (London: Gollancz, Ltd.), published last autumn, is one of the few really good novels that have reached this country since the war began. It fully lives up to its name and lame. It shows also how, out of material that might escape most professional writers and newspapermen, an observer with insight and sympathy can create a story with a fresh atmosphere all its own. Probably the reviews that have preceded the book to this country, by many months are familiar to many readers on the look-out for something good, but an outline of the story, for its very novelty, may be worth presenting again. MAJOR JOPPOLO, U.S.A. The hero and the leading figure is Major Victor Joppolo, U.S.A., an Italian-American, born in the Bronx and a clerk in the Sanitation Department of the New York City Administration who, by virtue of his experience there and his Italian parentage, becomes AMGOT officer in the small Sicilian town of Adano, following the advance of the American army in the Sicilian campaign. The story tells how he succeeded in the difficult task of restoring the civic life of Adano, with many improvements on the Fascist regime, and gaining the affection of its volatile, impressionable Sicilian people. He was, says the author in his foreword, "more or less the American Mayor after our invasion." Before him pass the people of the town, and it is with his relations vvith them and with the American military authorities that the story is chiefly concerned Joppolo is a most attractive character, "a good man, though weak in certain, attractive human ways," and "what he did and what he was not able to do in Adano," comments the author, an American war correspondent, "represented in miniature what America can and cannot do in Europe." Hence the value of the book, apart from its high literary quality, in the present period of delicate and difficult reconstruction in Europe. The great charm.of the book is in the telling'of the story in a style like the Sicilian air, clear and limpid, exactly suited to the scene. Major Joppolo has his henchman. Sergeant Borth, M.P., of Hungarian parentage, of wide experience, "an American citizen and an enlisted man by choice," to whom "the whole war was a cynical joke." Here is a passage where Joppolo and Borth come to the Town Hall of Adano on their first day there: It was a building with a look of authority about it. This was not one of those impermanent-looking Worid's-Fair-architecture Fascist headquarters which you see in so many Italian towns, buildings so up to the moment in design that, like aeroplanes, they were obsolete before they were ever finished. This was an old building, made of stone. At its second floor it had an old balcony, a place of many speeches. This building' had served Kings before Fascists and now was about to serve democracies after them. In case you couldn't recognise authority in the shape of the building, there stood, in embossed bronze letters across the front, the words "PALAZZO DI CITTA." There was a clock tower on the left-hand front corner. On top of the tower there was a metal frame which must have been designed to hold a bell. But there was no bell. KEY TO THE TITLE. That is the key to the title of the tale, "A Bell for Adano." Later, Joppolo asks Zito, the town usher, what the people most want, and Zito says the bell. "Our bell which was seven hundred years old Mussolini took it. It rang with a good tone each quarter-hour. Mussolini took it to make rifle barrels or something. The town was very angry. .. ." Later again, when other citizens come to visit the new civic authority, Major Joppolo. U.S.A., AMGOT, they tell him the same thing. The town needs a bell more than anything, they say. So Joppolo. finding the town bell has really been removed from Adano and Sicily, shipped to a Turin foundry to make munitions, decides to get them a new bell. How he gets it is the story, but much happens in between, much of great interest, well recounted. r It might be the story of any invasion or liberation and the encounters of the liberators and the people. And the major his work, well begun but still unfinished, is. by the whim of superior military authority, transferred elsewhere, and leaves Adano. Here is the end: , About four miles outside the town the major said to the driver: "Stop a •minute, would you, please?" The driver stopped the jeep. "Listen." 'the major said. "Do you hear anything?" It was a fine sound on the summer air. The tone was good, and it must have been loud to hear it as far as this. "Just a bell," the driver said. "Must be eleven o'clock." "Yes." the major said. He looked over the hills across the sea, and the day was as clear as the sound of the bell itself, but the major could not see or think very clearly. "Yes." he said, "eleven o'clock." Two other novels that can be recommended are: "The Three Bamboos," by Robert Standish (The Reprint Society, London), the story of the rise of a great commercial-financial family, like the Mitsui or the Mitsubishi, to exercise a controlling influence over the destiny of Japan, and "Being Met Together." by Vaughan . Wilklns, author of "And So—Victoria" (Jonathan Cape, London), a fine historical novel of the Napoleonic Wars, from 1781 (Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown) to about 1318 (Napoleon on St. Helena). For sheer skill in construction and excellence of style this is one of the best historical novels for many years- ________________ SALVATION ARMY CONGRESS Delegates from all parts of the Dominion will attend the Salvation Army Congress gatherings in Wellington, to be held from May 31 to June 5. The congress will 'be under the direction of Colonel Charles Walls (chief secretary in New Zealand), with whom will be associated Colonel and Mrs. E. C. Slattery and Licut.-Colonel J«. Bray, Australia. An outstanding feature of the congress will be the attendance of eight bands, from Ashburton, Christchurch, Feilding, Greymouth, Palmerston North, and Sydenham. The first public gathering will be a welcome to the visiting officers and delegates in the Citadel, Vivian Street. A united women's meeting, to which the women of all organisations are invited, will be held in the Citadel on Friday afternoon, the speakers being the Mayoress. Mrs, W. Appleton, an I Mrs. Colonel Slattery. On Saturday afternoon an old identities' rally will be held in the Citadel. The public are invited. A ■festival of music, in which local and visiting bands and a singing brigade of 200 voices will take part will be held in the Town Hall on Saturday night. Three meetings will be held in the Town Hall on Sunday, a feature of the afternoon gatherings being an address: "Experiences, Gay and Grave, by Lieut-Colonel Bray. Final public events will take place on Monday: a 'field day and bands review at New town Park in the morning, and -a young people's demonstrption at night iin the Town Hall. .