Auberon Waugh on new novels

Mr Bone's Retreat Margaret Forster (Seeker and Warburg 38s) The reviewer's role has always seemed to me an essentially humble one, his relationship to the reading public rather the same as that of a taster at some Renaissance court to his Prince. Our only absolute obligation is to read the book. Thereafter, if we turn green and die in great pain, prudent members of the reading public will leave the book alone. All people really require from a reviewer is that he briefly describes what sort of book it is—whether it attempts to bloodcurdle, to amuse, to excite sexually, to provoke compas- sionate or romantic feelings, to stimulate the intelligence, to advance some political philo- sophy or to propound an entirely new one— and then flash a red or green light to indicate whether or not the book succeeds in what it sets out to do. In this way we reviewers save other people's time and make our own tiny contribution to the national produc- tivity drive, to the enjoyment of leisure among the educated classes and ultimately, I suppose, to the living standards of our own beloved working class.

Just occasionally, however, in the, re- viewer's dim but useful life there comes a book which seems to deserve better than the sickly, relieved smile of a man who feared it might be worse. What should the reviewer do then? The language of criticism possesses its own superlatives—`compelling', 'com- passionate', `life-enhancing', 'delightful', `sympathetic'—but these have all been used too often on dust-jackets for them to give any impression of a book which, in the re- viewer's opinion, is genuinely touched by excellence, and which merits reading by those who have lost the novel-reading habit through countless disappointments in the past. Let me just say that Miss Forster's latest novel-,-. more skilfully constructed and better written than any of its predecessors if slightly less obtrusive in its emotional impact—is a taste of Heaven.

The emotions it attempts to excite are those of humour and pity, joined by occasional bursts of righteous anger at human stupidity, callousness etc. All highly enjoyable, and Miss Forster pulls it off magnificently. Quite suddenly, it seems to me, with this novel she has become as good as anyone now writing in the English language.

The hero, Mr Bone, Is a bachelor recluse whose bachelor eccentricities verge at times upon the insane. Those who criticise novelists for a tendency to write about eccentric rather than 'normal' people should reflect on how very few people are anything less than extremely eccentric, how the whole concept of a 'normal' person is little more than a novelist's invention in the first place, adopted afterwards by advertisement media men and politicians for their own cynical purposes.

The criterion of eccentricity, in literature, must be credibility; Mr Bone is not only credible, he is also sympathetic.

Mr Bone's peculiarity is an extreme regard for his own privacy. He lives in a small part of his own house, a Regency gem; the base- ment flat is occupied by an aged woman friend, who gives no trouble. The action of the novel describes how the other flat is invaded by -a young couple—he a repulsive sub-criminal, she sweet and pregnant—and Mr Bone's adjustment to them. As a char- acter. Mr Bone has already shown us glimpses of himself in William Trevor's The Old Boys and in two of Muriel Spark's works

—Memento Mori and The Bachelors—but this is the first time he has been revealed in

all his splendour. He deserves to become a literary archetype—the fussy, hung-up Eng- lish bachelor—and I should love to see a few other writers give him a try—L. P. Hartley, for instance, or A. Powell.

Readers should he warned of two things: The novel starts on Christmas Eve, with snow falling, a pregnant girl and her man seeking lodgings, no room at the inn (or at any rate no money to pay for it). For a moment, the reader thinks that this is going to be some ghastly parable about Christmas, with the face of Des Wilson. (of Shelter) about to loom out of the snow and suggest that the real purpose of the Saviour's coming was to see that the provident members of the Eng- lish labouring classes should be better housed in 1971 than formerly.

In fact Miss Forster is only teasing us. If there is any reason apart from this, why she introduces Christmas, it is to demonstrate how Christmas remains as the one family festival of the year in which the states of bachelorhood and homelessness are seen at their most unnatural and poignant. At other times, the virtues of rottenness and of not being tied down may be more apparent, but to be alone or without shelter on Christmas Day is still something of a rebuke in the modern world.

The second warning which, as the reading public's taster, I feel bound to give, concerns

the pretty, pregnant woman's husband, called

Alexander. Once again, for a terrible moment, we suspect that Miss Forster might want us to'like him. He is the least success-

ful character in the book, being everybody's pasteboard Sussex University student—Soc- Soc, hairy, drug-taking, jargon chanting etc.

His conversation is utterly unconvincing. This is how he addresses his wife: 'You're up- tight all the time—like this. You've too many hang-ups . . . spiritually. you're a drag . . • that's your wavelength . . . you never freak out ... you never get up and go.'

No doubt this is an accurate enough tran- scription of the way some people talk, but it does not graft itself successfully on a novel about people who talk quite differently. In real life, I have no doubt, this Alexander

will get himself a good job on the Sunday

Times, cultivate a northern accent and be accepted in time as a highly significant mem-

ber of society. But there is an important truth

about the alternative culture, that it cannot usefully ever be compared with normal cul- ture. Although there are good jokes to be

derived from a confrontation of the two cultures, one cannot briefly sketch a proper hippie into a straight narrative without

taking far more trouble than Miss Forster has allowed. As a result, Alexander is both incredible and irritating, but at least we do not see much of him, and at least Miss Forster does not expect us to like him, on the slight acquaintance she allows.

For the rest, Miss Forster's book is a sheer delight. Its one blemish is tiny compared to its enormous virtues. and I recommend it from the bottom of my hvirt as the best novel yet printed in 1971 and the'best for a long time before that.