24 AUGUST 1945, Page 16

Fiction

Goon in the Block. By Eric Williams. (Cape. 8s. 6d.) Dog's Life. By Gordon Boshell. (Seeker and Warburg. 6s.) The Carden. By L. A. G. Strong. (Methuen. 6s.) 'Mirage. By P. P. Muir and E. D. H. Tollemache. (Boardman. 8s. 6d.)

SOME experiences lend themselves readily to the form of fiction, indeed, they are transmuted and enriched by the process in many instances ; but this is by no means so in every case, for sometimes the guise of the novel destroys or debases the intrinsic quality of the work. While praising and recommending Eric Williams' Goon in the Block, I am churlish enough to wish that he had not chosen the novel as his medium. For his material has a special importance which would have been both more valid and valuable in some different form. Documentaries and reportage, so fashionable and so much admired in the years between the wars, have suffered an eclipse, which is a pity, as they are excellently suited to certain types of war observations, especially in instances of actual experi- ences of actual happenings. The central figure of Eric Williams' novel is a young R.A.F. officer Peter, who comes down by para- chute in Germany after a raid on the Ruhr. More than half the book is taken up by details of life in the various prison camps, told with humour and liveliness. The material is quite absorbing, and the author has a mild eye for the idiosyncratic oddities of his various characters. He describes with sympathy and detachment some of the states of tension, as well as the rare outbursts when circumstances make havoc of good intentions. His findings are mostly restrained and feasible. His prisoners keep up " the con- stant fight against the squalor, the constant fight against the bore- dom and lassitude," by the one method possible: 'The only way to keep alive is to create obligations for yourself." Ultimately Peter and his friends, John and Nigel, succeed in tunnelling their way to the freedom of the open German countryside. Little is told of their hazardous journey of 35o odd miles into neutral country. The last section of the book is the least satisfactory, since such experience as these three young men had undergone cannot be digested com- pletely during their first few days of freedom, with its resultant anti- climax of discontented restlessness in Sweden. Worth reading and readable as it is, Goon in the Block does not reach the high imagina- tive standard of such works as E. E. Cummings' The Enormous Room, J. R. Ackerley's Prisoners of War, and Aladar Kuncz's Black Monastery.

In Dog's Life Gordon Boshell gets a great deal of fun out of some of the fashionable oddities of human behaviour. Special targets for his cheerful satire are noisy newspaper magnates and their columnists, dog-lovers and their foibles. When Mr. Samuel Perkins finds him- self man into dog he is taken in hand by a knowledgeable dachshund, who ohs him wise on the logical methods of handling doggie devotees. Following such expert advice, he presently finds himself installed in a comfortable home, where for a time all goes well. In his earlier existence Samu4 Perkins had worked for a newspaper under the pseudonym " John Greatheart," being the sixth person to live up to that name, invented specially for the gossip columnist of the Daily Monitor. Owing to the rash use of an American port- manteau invention—" Infanticipating "—on the very day his meta- morphosis takes place, he is sacked. He harbours no particular feelings of affection and respect for newspaper proprietors, and when chance gives him his moment the fur (or perhaps one should write " the skin ") begins to fly in more senses of the word than one. Presently Mr. Perkins is back in the palatial buildings of the Daily Monitor, with an office of his own and a snug little two-year contract with four thousand pounds as the " Writing Dog" ; he draws a further five thousand from an American film company. His popu- larity with the public is terrific, though Mr. Boshell gives us no example of his articles. Newspapermen are notorious sentimentalists and Mr. Perkins is not, unfortunately, an exception to the rule, so that his adventures in Fleet Street are more ribald than savage, which seems a pity. However, the author does score some good points and provides a novel entertainment.

The Garden, which first appeared in top and is probably the most . popular of L. A. G. Strong's books, has now been reprinted as the first volume in a collected edition of this author's novels. The story is simple, for it tells, with loving attention to detail, of a boy who is taken for a holiday to his grandparents' home in Dublin almost every year. The first sections of the book are much the most successful, for in these the author evokes the zest of boyhood with a charm that almost equals Forrest Reid's delightful Young Tom. But Dermot becomes a prig and gets steadily more tiresome and unboyish. How- ever, the book has other values, for it gives us a fascinating account of a Dublin which no longer exists. Dermot's grandparents and indeed most of the minor characters are delightful, though the boy's parents and sister are never more than dim figures at their best and brightest moments.

A novel about France, Mirage deals with the four years of the German occupation. The story is dramatic, and is told with a feverish emphasis on all the sordid details-of treachery, self-seeking, cupidity and lust: " Again there was silence. Otto Von Winkel was glad of the darkness. It was a good thing this slip of a girl could not see his face. He longed to give way to the anger that raged within him. How could she insult his intelligence with this cooked- up tale to help her lover to escape? She would certainly not risk her life unless he was her lover. Why did he, Otto Von Winkel, want this woman as he had never wanted a woman before? He would still have her, but on his own terms. Yes, that would assuage his injured pride. That she did not love him was a certainty, and he was equally sure that she was merely offering herself in barter. He could never forgive that, but he would take what she offered and then fail to keep his side of the pact." Needless to say Angeliquc and her young man escape the villain's machinations. Victoria Cross, the elderly governess, and Veuve Deschamps, the ageing peasant woman, are additional heroines in the struggle of heroic faith against