New Novels
The Tunnel of Love. By Peter de Vries. (Gollancz, 12s. 6d.) MR. DE VRIES has written a comedy of manners of that upper- middle-class, commuting world which forms the background of every other American novel you pick up. His is the graceful living, sports clothes sub-section of it whose component parts are (as is Mr. de Vries) something to do with the New Yorker, or private- income poets, or members of committees on Child Psychology. At home they know about cooking; they take coffee and Armagnac and hi-fi seriously; they quarrel with their wives, whom they like. In town they eat sandwiches, drink hard liquor and make passes at girls they don't like. This dichotomy has been closely observed by Mr. de Vries. He describes his world in dead- pan first-person; and much of what he writes is excellent satire. Yet somehow one is left with the feeling that this surface observa- tion, rich in detail and keenly particularised, is all there is on offer; the underlying value-judgements seem fuzzy and vague; and the structure of the book—a series of suburban sketches strung precariously on the frailest of plots, like heavy beads on thin cotton—shows clearly enough that The Tunnel of Love has only been half planned.
Mr. Enright has written a novel of great promise. Once he has made up his mind about a point of view a deal is to be expected of him.
The Bird's Nest is a remarkable tour de force. Miss Jackson, whose ability we already know something about, tells the story of Elizabeth Richmond's struggle to retain her identity in the face of four separate personalities that try to take her over. We see two of the personalities, Beth and Betsy, emerge quite quickly through the sane, horrified eyes of old, mannered Dr. Wright. Elizabeth, orphaned, lives with Aunt Morgen, who lives with a brandy bottle; and at first it seems hopeless that she will ever be able to bring together the splintered, warring elements that are destroying her and each other. And yet—well, when Bess appears —but this is a book you should read for yourself. Miss Jackson has produced a terrifyingly real picture of a multiple personality which, in its convolutions and convulsions, is more gripping than a detective story. If the vast, unexplored, Hic Sum Leones of the human mind fascinate you, as they do me, then The Bird's Nest is essential reading.
One last word about the reprint of Mr. Warren's The Night Rider. I hadn't read it before; and I found it relatively routine (if superior of its kind) American, violence writing until about page 390. Around there Mr. Warren really takes hold of his characters and shakes them. There is an extraordinarily fine long passage in Kentucky dialect, a capsule history of pioneering from the mouth of an old man, called Willie Proudfit; and this is followed by three scenes, written with easy power that the rest of the book, for all its solid virtues, doesn't even hint at. It's the last ninety pages or so that make The Night Rider worth reading
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