Fiction
Household in Athens. By Glenway Wescott. (Hamish Hamilton. 8s. 6d.)
The Laughter of My Father. By Carlos Bulosan. (Michael Joseph.
7s. 6d.) -
The Eighth Champion of Christendom. By Edith Pargeter. (Heine- mann. 10s. 6d.) SINCE the outbreak of the Second World War the most common excuse given by American publishers for not accepting fiction written on this side of the Atlantic is that the rejected novel has " a too English flavour." Perhaps our publishers in turn reject novels from the other side of the. Atlantic on the plea that they are not American enough! During 1940 discriminating friends sent lively and stimu- lating accounts of a novel which was enjoying a considerable succes d'estime in America, called The Pilgrim Hawk. The author, Glen Wescott, had set his story in a suburb of Paris during the 'twenties. It was his first essay in fiction for ten years. Since he was well known in England for his studies of life in the Middle •West, one imagined that it was merely a matter of a few months before his new book appeared over here. Solar this expectation has been in vain, bin possibly the reception accorded here to his latest novel will now secure English publication of the earlier book. Ifclusehoki in Athens has a theme similar to that of the long short story by Vercors, Le Silence de la Mer, first published in Paris under the Nazi occu- pation in 1942. But Wescott's characters are more robust, conceived with more harshness, but they are less rigid than those of the French writer. His story is more moving, for while not free from a taint of sentimentality, it is based on an idealism less grandiloquent and more pitiful. His principal Greek characters, the Helianos, wish to live, they are not very brave ; their thoughts tend to muddle ; they have problems of personality, which even the occupation of their native land by. a hateful enemy can not deflate. Their sufferings are of the flesh as well as of the spirit. The German officer who makes his abode in their home is not handicapped by the conscious- ness of any debt to an ancient civilisation. He is full of contempt for small nations. He treats his hosts and their children with scorn and brutality. But he, too, needs an audience for his ideas, which are most sinister and alarming, for here spiritual development demands in its pursuit a positive allegiance to cruelty and ruthless- ness. He, too, renirns from leave in his native land, a broken man. His beloved wife and his two young serving sons have been destroyed by the war. Their loss overthrows him, so that he is no longer of any use to Germany. He commits suicide, but not before he has delivered his host over to the Gestapo, and left behind a letter suggesting that the family with whom he has lived so long shall be made responSible for his death. In the final days of this horrible assault the Greek family rise with courage and fortitude. 'And after the Germans have shot Helianos, his wife continues, the fight against the common enemy with the strength of love and devotion. Glenway Wescott takes us through a nightmare world, which, since it is depicted with intelligence and imagination, lifts his book well above the level of the average novel dealing with the German occupation of Europe.
Some of the stories now lightly linked together in The Laughter of My Father originally appeared in The New Yorker. They are sketches of life in Luzon in between the two world wars, done with an acrid yet gay humour, which is sharply refreshing. Carlos Bulosan goes to Till Eulenspiegel for the fable of the rich man's suit against his poverty-stricken neighbour, which he retells with a verve almost equal to that of De Coster. The Filipino background is rendered richly, with vivid descriptions of customs and ceremonies; there are brides from Mexico and visits from the dog-eating head- hunters, white horses, fighting cocks and fighting rams, al! playing parts which the author fashions with the liveliest gusto. This is an unusual book with a decidedly astringent flavour which will shock those whom it fails to please.
The Eighth Champion of Christendom details the adventures of a young man named Jim Benison, who, on the evening of September 1st is in an English country public-house, playing darts and listening to the news.- He is in love with the barmaid Delia : " She went off singing ; she hadn't much of a voice, but it was sweet enough, and she had a way of tossing her head.as she burst into song, like a fine, high-spirited pony." Jim joins up, by Christmas he is back in the village on leave, he fights a battle over the beautiful Delia and then becomes engaged to her. For no very suitable or convincing reason she decides to keep this secret, even tholigh she knows she has a younger and not less beautiful rival. Jim goes to France and is billeted on a beautiful Czech farmeress, a refugee from Prague whose French husband is at the war. After the German break-through the Midshire regiment is sent to help the Belgians. After Dunkirk Jim, with a companion from his native village, makes his way back to the farm of the Czech refugee. On the journey they find and identify the dead body of her sergeant husband. By the time they reach sanctuary Jim is badly wounded and his companion is suffering from pneumonia. They are nursed back to health by the Czech woman, who is seized, on the very night they leave her house, by the Germans, who shoot her. Jim's mate is killed. On his return home Jim finds the luscious Delia has married his rival, thinking he has been killed. However, the equally beautiful Imogen is mon
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