THE BOOKSHELF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 35 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSHELF

PRIOR MEMORIAL PRIZE TOWARD THE GREAT NOVEL "Tiburon," by Kylie Tennant, has been awarded the S. H. Prior Memorial prize as the outstanding contribution to Australian literature for 1935. It paints a vivid picture of a typical Australian small town, and captures with delightful naturalness that unmistakable quality which earmarks the Australian all the world over.

The average New Zealander, who reads for the most part to avoid the immediacies of life, will think to find nothing to his liking in a chronicle of Australian small town activities. But in this he will be wrong, since he has reckoned without Miss Tennant. 'Her characters at first encounter appear the most raw and unattractive material; but she presents them with sympathy, humour and insight, and proves them to be even more real, in the individual sense, than the conventional good citizen.

Tiburon, the town, has nothing to recommend it. There must be hundreds of such small towns with their cluster of plate-glass shopfronts in the middle of the business centre, dwindling to mean cottages within a mile. The characters are those of all such towns and it has pleased Miss Tennant to give the rough element pride of place. The bagmen and swaggers, or travellers as they appear to be called, lead the band. The viewpoint of the author seems to coincide with that of the young schoolteacher of the story, Jessica Daunt. It is her first country. appointment and she comes to teach in Tiburon full of enthusiasm for life. She is a little smug about , her intellectual Sydney friends and altogether a charming little prig. She is soon compelled by loneliness to rely for companionship on Paul White, a member of the most dissolute family of the town. The Whites at close quarters are merely squalid, and not as bhd as reputation paints them. When her school year is over, Jessica returns to Sydney none the worse for her experience. The book is well written, and without a suggestion of propaganda, presents the case of the down-and-out. It is moreover, a tolerant and honest book, which exciting in itself, also paints a recognisable picture, thus making doubly sure of a welcome. ' "Tiburon," by Kylio Tennant. (Bulletin)