Fiction
Alfred the King. By Patry Williams. (Faber. us.) I CANNOT read Scott with any-great enjoyment nowadays, mar indeed could I ever do so, but Scott's idea of a historical novel still seems to me altogether sounder than the present fashion in this genre of keeping strictly to the names and events in the history books. Why fiction, after all, if invention is left out ? No character in this book," inns a -prefatory mate to Alfred the King,' "is fictitious ; and the events in which he,-or she, took part, stand On the- authority of early -retord."... Is there enough to be got in these circumstances from adopting the forinal devices—chiefly the passages of imaginary dialogue—of a novel ? In the first work published by Miss Patty and Miss Williams in Collaboration, I Am Canute, I think there was. This was an extraordinarily spirited piece of -writing, which gave brave shape and colour to the admittedly scanty record. A novel about Saint Dunstan, God's Warrior, which came next, Wei -not so successful ; the material here was less pliant, less amenable to the, rigours of historiographical metho4. In narrative force :rand interest Alfred the King comes somewhere between the two earlier books ,' It gives a careful and I think very accurate pictiite..!'cif Alfred's battle against the Danes—the authors have turned-their wide reading to special advantage in the intervals between the set battle pieces—and Makes 'something rather more than a -shadow of Alfred himself. The language of the book, which is pleasantly diversified by snatches (A Anglo-Saxon poetry, wobbles too con- stantly between the Plain, the poetically coloured. and The incon- gruously contemporary. But one's chief complaint is that, aS a novel; it adds too- little to the authority, of early record.: Men at Work is a.' contemporary record, •truthfull' and lively. It deals, in genuinely story telling fashion, with the Subject' of Management and -men u industrY, and it makes its points lightly and with what seems to me admirable good -sense and fairness. Mr. Clewes describes a medium-sized plant On the outskirts of London, concentrating his study of the problems of "industrial democracy" in a sketch of the membership of the works council, which is well established and a model Of its kind. How, in-.,the name of reason, 'account for the fantastic, summer-lightning strike that occurs at Willerby's after a night-shift foreman has been offered a managerial post ? - The tissue of serio-comic incidents that lead up to the strike is very amusingly done, but •the heart of the matter, Mr. Clewes argues, in this as in so many other short-lived strikes nowadays, is simply. the . difficulty of reconciling a human or emotional relationship in industry with a money relationship. -The novel is conventional in design and is now and then just a little facile in sentiment, but Mr. Clewes has a light, sympathetic, humorous and imaginative touch that makes for good reading.- .
Miss Manning's is a light touch, too, in School for Love, though it is much less assured. She tells the story of a:sixteen-year-old boy, an orphan, who is sent from Baghdad during the last war to lodge for some months in Jerusalem with an almost inconceivably odious and ridiculous Miss Bohun. The local colour is applied to some purpose, but the greedy, grasping, boorish, malevolent, crackpot Miss Bohun really will not do. The edge of comedy in this rather slight novel is blunted by the impression _Miss Manning leaves of taking it out of characters she does not like. '
The Alan on the Pier is laboured and -seems 46\me withoiit much point. A tale of amorous obsession' set in an English icountry house where manners, and conversation are always .,aSpiring-. towards the recondite, it culminates in a scene of erotic fantasy of not very grown-up temper: I found it impossible to believe forr-a moment in Ned Moon, Reamur Cedar, Aroncer--MarMa. •
Mr. Howard Spring is a novelist'of Solid and considerable talent, whose ability to tell a story, sense of character, craftsmanship and industry should ptit hollower and More pretentious novelists to shame. The Houses in Between is a long, leisurely, crowded chronicle spanning Ale century since the Great Exhibition, whose Crystal Palace, glimpsed at the age of three; remains for Sarah Rainborough a bright vision of the unattainable and ideal. The novel is old-fashioned in style, it does miss something of life, triith, reality, but .it has qualities of imagination and feeling which; alas ! newer and more contemporary-minded.wiiters so often lack and without which they perhaps should not write novels at all.
R: D. CHARQUES.
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