NEW NOVELS
Summer show
BARRY COLE
The Girls: Volume I The Girls and Pity for Women Volume II: The Hippogrill and The Lepers Henry de Montherlant (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 42s each) The Gay Life Valeriy Tarsis (Collins/Harvill 25s) The Creep Jeffrey Frank (Barrie/Cresset 21s) No Transfer Stephan Walton (MacGibbon and Kee 25s) The Man Who Held the Queen to Ransom and Sent Parliament Packing Peter van Greenaway (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 25s) The Day the Queen Flew to Scotland for the Grouse Shooting Arthur Wise (Cavalier Pub- lishing 25s) It is generally accepted that publishers are not famous for their ability to promote their pro- ducts. A possible fiction is that during the sum- mer season they publish books aimed mainly at the English-speaking tourists. How else can one account for the wealth (and it often is) of foreign novels put out during high summer? This week, for example, we have two (essen- tially four) from France, one from the Soviet Union (as it were) and two from the United States. As if striving for a compromise between the political stools of the last three, we have two British novels whose subjects are osten- sibly revolutionary.
Henry de Montherlant's tetralogy is a master- piece of literary masculine arrogance. If you prefer your women subjugated, prefer them to bear child and household, bare mind and breast, believe their place to be home and bed, then Montherlant is for you.
A vain and witty anti-troubadour, writing with callous good humour and remark- able skill, he depicts his adventures with four women. These are Andree, an intellectual peasant whose sexual expression is confined to the written word; Solange, a desirable middle- class sex symbol, whose teeth Ciistalithe author-hero throughout—finds hard, bui-whom he nevertheless at one point gets near to marry- ing; Therese, a religious maniac who provides Costals with innumerable literary jokes; and Rhadidja, a teenage mistress whose- nubility and desirability suggest to-Costalsthatthere may be more to women sui generis than he admits. The complete work, undoubtedly
hedonistic, has a diverse and fractured con- struction which over the four parts works astonishingly well. There is great colour and a joie de vivre which almost wholly dispel Costal's tart misogynism. The first volume has an excellent introduction by Peter Quennell.
Valeriy Tarsis's The Gay Life deals mainly with the Black Sea lives of Dimitry, a fisher- man and keeper of apes at a small zoo; Sophy, his young and goddess-like second wife; his son Odysseus and Malyshev, a retired and dis- appointed Russian colonel. With arch simplicity they discuss the purpose of their lives, thoughts and actions. All the men are in love with Sophy, whose own affections display a fickle honesty. Little happens but there is much gentle probing at the softer parts of modern life. As the book develops, new characters intrude upon the weird idealism of the Caucasian group, altering and confusing their hitherto uncom- plicated lives. Like Costals, Malyshev gives us a good portion of his author's attitudes and personality. Tarsis leaves the end open. The end of his characters, that is.
The Creep is the sad story of Bartholomew, a sort of adult Charlie Brown. Lodging point- lessly in a large American city, he does little but contemplate and exacerbate his loneliness, his inability to make friends. Naive and unpre- possessing, longing for love, he manages to experience twenty minutes with an ageing pros- titute (`You were good,' she says), brief en- counters with unpleasant tenement supervisors, and an anguished unrequited love for Miss Alice Knazy, a beautiful fellow-lodger. Jeffrey Frank's power lies in his wry observation of American urban life and in his remarkable ability to get inside a character who seems so much the quintessential modern lonely man. The book, curiously, is far from depressing; there are patches of humour which might have come from Thurber or Leacock and the writing is neat. In the end, Bartholomew, narrowly avoiding what seems like a nervous breakdown, makes a decision. A sort of low-key hope is implied. The other American work No Transfer, is very much weaker. Its bleak attempt to foist a significant fable on a slightly Utopian campus just doesn't come off, despite Stephan Walton's obvious inventiveness. Unfortunately novels aren't inventedthey're created. Peter van Greenaway's Queen novel posits the advent of the mythical benevolent dictator. Captain Wyatt, a mysterious idealist, gets to- gether a tiny band of like-minded men, takes over Parliament, arresti the Queen and her family, locks them in the Tower and starts set- ting Britain to rights. During this operation no one gets killed 41nd no attempts are made to thwart the takeover. The general population re- gards the events as an extension of their tele- vision entertainment. Ruling by decree, Wyatt restores confidence in sterling, improves trade, tells the Yanks.'to get out, cuts crime in a novel way, and finally sends troops to Rhodesia. ,
This last move proves his undoing, the end is sudden and the monarchy restored. Mr van Greenaway writes with an ingenuous ingenuity and shies innumerable stones at the coconut heads of right wing attitudes. There are some neat metaphors and Wyatt, would-be Liberal ProteCtor, seems almost real.
Arthur Wise's-complethentary work is an im- probable extravaganza. The North of England declares war on the South following (this is seriotiO"thrieagal of a theatre grant. Mr Wise,
in his determination to show the cruelty of civil war, packs his pages with gratuitous violence. Six thousand tons of bombs are dropped on Nottingham, which opts for the North, and from there on the book becomes a paradigm of exaggerated hatred. There is much uncon- scious humour (We'll live to see the Trolls raping the luscious Sussex countryside' snarl, one Northerner) and a considerable disregard for logic.
Both Mr Wise and Mr van Greenaway have, however, written filmable yarns. I can well imagine a director casting for the part of Queen: 'Hey, Liz, these will be the crowning parts of your career...: All good stuff for the tourists.
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