FICTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26704, 25 February 1948, Page 2

FICTION

A Boat for England. By Sigurd Evensmo. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 8s 6d. A Mountain Boyhood. By Andre Chamson. John Lehmann. Bs. The Undertaker’s Wife. By Theodora Benson. Gollancz. 10s 6d. The Fourth Point of the Star. By Hazel Walsh. The Girffen Press. 7s 6d. Norwegian Resistance

This is the tale of a young factory worker who became caught up in the Norwegian Resistance Movement and who pays the penalty at the hands of the Gestapo. It is a good story, but the author has treated it in such a way as to give it significance. When the hero first starts to assist the underground workers he has no full appreciation of what he is doing nor why. It is only after he is captured, during his imprisonment, and while he is waiting for death that he comes to appreciate the real issues involved for himself and for his country. ... A Boat for England is a genuinely moving piece of work.

In the Pyrenees It is seldom that one encounters a book which gives an impression of unusual quality from its opening sentence, but A Mountain Boyhood is such a book. The author, Andre Chamson, is described as one of the outstanding French writers of to-day. This book at least shows that here is one who deserves to be better known by English readers. It is a short book of five episodes in the author’s youth, and they are reprinted and rearranged from the periodical “New Writing.’’ The material is simple but the author’s treatment of it is unfailingly sure. The translation flows clearly and easily and gives an indication of the quality of the style of the original. English Village Life

Theodora Bepson’s latest novel, The Undertaker’s Wife, falls into two parts. It deals with a group of characters in their youth and in their closing years. In between there is a gap of 20 years which is ignored. Her idea is apparently to show the bending of the twig and the shape of the mature tree, but in this she has hardly been successful. Her writing, however, is pleasant, and a number of the scenes are admirable in themselves. One is left with the impression that Miss Benson can do much better than this. Murder in the Hospital A New Zealand hospital in the Northland is the setting for The Fourth Point of the Star, a story of hospital life. What is apparently a murder and the doings of a gang of saboteurs provide the theme but these events are given somewhat shadowy treatment. What pleasure the book gives is mostly derived from the descriptions of the life of the nurses, of which the author obviously writes with first-hand knowledge.