FICTION
By FORREST REID
OF the five novels in this very heterogeneous group two are American, one is a translation from the French, and two are English : of the five novelists, Mr. Frederic Prokosch possesses by far the most individual talent. Probably his technique has to some extent been influenced by the Cinema. Not nearly so obviously as Mr. Foster's, .of course ; but still, the drama is presented in a series of pictures or scenes, vividly evoked, and then allowed to fade out before a new picture emerges. The drawback to such a method is the sacrifice of pattern : the story branches off in all directions, so that we are constantly making a fresh start and reaching a fresh climax. Mr. Prokosch, indeed, achieves a certain unity of effect, but it is almost entirely by means of atmosphere, while Mr. Foster, much less successfully, seeks it in a recurrent idea—the "American dream."
The Seven Who Fled, nevertheless, shows a marked advance on Mr. Prokosch's first novel, The Asiatics. It is written with more restraint, its strangeness is more human, more controlled, while description and atmosphere are used with a more definite dramatic purpose. The " Seven " are seven Europeans (an Englishman, a Belgian, a Russian, a Frenchman and his wife, an Austrian, and a German) ; the flight is from Kashgar, and through the heart of Asia, seething with political disturbance. Very soon trouble begins. At Aqsu the German and the Austrian are arrested, the Russian and Belgian are detained as "hostages," and the Frenchman, de la Scare, who had intended to journey on to China, falls seriously ill : Only Layeville, the Englishman, and Madame de is Scare are free to depart. The book is planned so that each of the characters provides his own story, which is presented in a tseparate section, and in every case a glimpse of the past is given to throw a light upon the present. The German and the Austrian succeed : the others fail, meeting with more or less tragic fates. The adventures are exciting, but the chief features of the novel are its richness of texture and the marvellous picture it gives of the East. Where it differs from The Asiatics is that this glowing physical background is woven much more closely into the story, plays a part in all that happens, reacting spiritually upon the fugitives, bringing out their latent strength and weakness. All through, the writing is admirably sustained, and again and again it has a haunting beauty :
"It was a rather old house, and was slowly disintegrating. A smell of decaying wood and decaying silk and decaying straw filled the rooms. The stairs groaned as she stepped on them. Moths fluttered out of the crevices in the floor and the walls. The eaves and the worm-eaten shingles whined and whispered all night long?!
Mr. Foster's American Dream has its romantic momenti also, but they mostly occur within the first hundred-and-fifty pages, after which the book proceeds along much more prosaic lines. It is the story of three generations in the Thrall family, as seen through the eyes of Shelby Thrall, the grandson, so that it begins in the present, goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, and then gradually advances in a kind of panoramic chronicle. The progression is not continuous, however ; there are gaps, while the illustrative episodes are complete in themselves, arid after each we return to Shelby the newspaper man, and to the "American dream." The plan does not seem to me successful. It provides a superficial connecting link between the stories, but no true sense of fusion, so that the book really consists of three short novels, each with its own particular setting, plot, and hero, though the two last overlap, and in the end merge together. It is the technique of the film, no doubt, but I cannot see what is gained by it, while its modernity has not precluded the employment of old-fashioned coincidence.
By far the most enticing of these stories is that of the grand- father Jean Thrall, an Irishman from Ulster, once master of
clipper-brig in the China opium trade, later concerned in amad attempt at gun-running between Hamburg_ and„ Bano;y1
Bay. This patriotic adventure, planned in the back parlour of a public-hbuse in Belfast,.. ends - ingloriously in a guttir • brawl. The revolution is over, the leaders are captured, and Jean, under an assumed name, :escapes to America is a steerage passenger in an emigrant ship. Here Mr. Foster is at his best. What he gives us is pure romance, yet at the same time vividly real. Unfortunately it occupies less than a third of the book, and with the next story, that of Jean's son John, a lawyer and an idealist, my interest at all events abruptly declined. It is in John's mind that the "American dream" becomes conscious—" a plan of human life which might yet save a world grown hard and ancient in dreadful practicality "—but John himself is a far less living and attrac- tive figure than the old sea captain, his father ; who, in . spite of possessing a wife and family in Boston, finished up as a Rajah on the Malay coast. From this - point the book begins to drag. There is too much of John, too much of Shelby, and the carefully realistic pictures of contemporary life lick the freshness and vitality of the earlier scenes.
That is where M. Simenon scores : by eliminating every- thing that is not absolutely essential to his story he keeps it on a plane of contimioui interest. Not an extraneous idea is allowed to enter, not a loose end to remain : The Disinti- gration of J. P. G. is, if nothing else, a triumph of construction. But it is also an extremely 'clever psychological study. L'Evadd may be something more, may possess an additional charm of style ; I cannot say, not having read it. J. P. G. is an escapea convict who when the book opens has for many years been living a respectable bourgeois life in La Rochelle. He is a schoolmaster, is married, and has a grown-up son and daughter. All is well with him, in fact, until one day a new mania/rift comes to the town, in whom he recognises the woman who was formerly his accomplice. True, she does not appear to remember him, but that only introduces an element of doubt, and he knows she has ascore to settle with him. His sufferings as a convict in Guiana have ruined J. P. G.'s nerve. "ffigsi sense of security time had built lip is only a thin outer crust which immediately collapses under this sudden, unexpected shock. Mentally, spiritually, he goes to pieces. The agonising process is traced with a scientific precision that is completely Convincing. Fear is at the root of it, not remorse. There is nobody to help him : his wife is not really his wife ; his children are bastards. His conduct becomes stranger and stranger. At first it is assumed that he is ill ; then mental trouble is suspected. At any rate,. he is no longer desirable as a schoolmaster. The whole thing comes to us through a mind increasingly tormented, so that the actual din*, even to the reader, brings something very like relief. "J. P.O. was in a taxi, wedged in between two policemen. He had to keep very still, for, if he showed the slightest sign of-moving, they twisted his arms."
The novels of Miss Steen and Miss Redlich cover more familiar ground, being concerned with ordinary middle-class English life. I found them well written, interesting, lively, realistic up to a point, and yet not entirely satisfying. Who Woutct Have Daughters"? gives the history of the three Anerly girls from childhood to middle-age, at which period the eldeat has acquired her-third husband, while the other two are still unmarried. Miss Steen presents it all with mingled irony and sympathy, but pre-War family life was not really quite the blend of hypocrisy, sentimentalism, and repression that she imagines. Particularly in the dialogue the note is exag- gerated. Nobody, except on -very rare occasions, can ever have talked as Daddy is made to -talk all the time, and as Ellen—otherwise an admirable portrait—talks to her niece. , Miss Steen's novel begins 'with comedy and ends rather grimly ; in Miss Redlich's No Love Lost a tragic plot is brought to a happy conclusion. It seems to me a conventional con- clusion. All Hilary's girlhood has been darkened by the fact that her father and mother lead a cat-and-dog existence, due to the mother's insane jealousy, and the point of the book is that Hilary has inherited this quality. When, therefore, she marries a man who is determined to live his own life, we expect it to emerge. it does in one powerful and coti;. vincing , scene. Then -Miss- Redlich -relents, and in a final, and much less. convincing scene.. the demon is_ exorcized.
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