Fiction

Mr. Faulkner Again

The City Keep. By Charles Malam. (Blackwell. 7s. 6d.)

Mn. MorraAm's work in fiction has hitherto been an attempt to see how near the heart of things one can get by simply keeping one's head. Castle Island, while in one or two respects it breaks fresh ground, is no departure from his rule. If there is about it a suggestion of the notebook, the notes have been taken to some purpose :

" The streets, drained by dinner-time, were as yet by no means full. . . "

" Church bells rung like that were something else besides music. They meant all that his boyish senses could absorb of order and continuity, and, not obeying himself, ho felt how wise and right it was that other people should obey them." " No man was further from dying of a broken heart. He died of a broken habit."

Here, clearly, the usual has been combined to make the unusual ; and this seems to me the proper answer to those who are put off by Mr. Mottram's " ordinariness."

Castle Island was the old Bank House at Easthampton, from which young Stephen, son of Doughty Dormer, looked out upon the world. Stephen's father, wielder of all power, guardian of all order, presided like an immortal over the island and its activities, reaching his pinnacle of omnipotence in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Then, suddenly, the world broke up. Doughty Dormer, injured in a fire, declined and died. The family left the Bank House.

Swiftly the years rushed down the steep incline to the Great War. Stephen served, was gassed, lived on, more or less an invalid, to a day past the present, and died.

This framework Mr. Mottram covers with a close texture of detail, of which the fullest and most satisfying is supported by the childhood years. Stephen's visit to Scotland, and his relations with his cousins, and particularly with Jean, are a delight. Jean, who becomes Stephen's wife, remains the finest character in the book, since in delineating her Mr. Mottram, either deliberately or because of the effect she has upon him, has relied more upon suggestion than is his wont. Childhood and boyhood take up half the story. After the year 1897 there is a sudden acceleration of tempo, which I personally found disturbing. Mr. Mottram works more happily when events are standing still. Full though

this book is, one cannot resist the feeling that it should be longer, and that the years 1900-1914--with their exciting glimpses of suffragette meetings, and the like--should have been as lovingly handled as the decade before them. Maybe, however, Mr. Mottram is turning over ground which he will cultivate later on. Here, at all events, is another careful and sympathetic chronicle of a world that has passed away : and it is probable that others, besides this generation, will thank Mr. Mottram for having made himself its historian.

If Castle Island is, in the most honourable sense, penny plain, Vain Lore is assuredly twopence coloured. It is an extraordinary, picaresque story, told at a furious pace, and splashed with all manner of vivid colours. Mario, the hero, a fisher lad of Capri, loves Giulietta. She is flighty, and

his grandmother advises him to beat her. A tourist pays her too much attention, and Mario ambushes him. Rushing back to tell Giulietta that he has killed his hated rival, he is repulsed, and flees for his life. Thus begins a fantastic odyssey which never flags till the end of the book. Marie goes to the slums of Naples, becomes a stowaway on a liner, finds a girl to replace Giulietta, performs a heroic deed, and comes, rich with reward, to Paraguay. From there; he sends for Giulietta. She comes, and he gains her, only to lose her again, and, with her, the life that is no longer of any value to him.

The bravura and speed of this book are remarkable. It told with gusto, a fluency, and a passionate concentration On each incident, which produces something of the inconsei fwent vividness of a dream. Typical of the author's • skill the scene in which, having imagined the baby girl's fall overboard, and determined to save her, Mario sees her fall, and plunges without hesitation over the ship's side. The last chapters are exceptionally powerful, and round off as full and lively a romance as has appeared for many a day.

Mr. Charles Malam brings us back to penny plain— literally : for Homer Gregorson, whom we find setting out from Silver River into the big world, had an Aunt Penny. Homer, as nice and straight (and old-fashioned) a young fellow as one could hope to find, sets out for the office of the Courier in Esterville, fortified by Aunt Penny's upbringing, by the adjurations of the Reverend Mudgett, and by certain ideals not unconnected with the person of Minnie Flowers. Esterville is not Silver River : the Reverend Brue is not the Reverend Mudgett ; and Dorcas Bassert is not Minnie Flowers. Here are real growing pains, simply and straight- forwardly portrayed. Homer's faith and code are assaulted, and for a while the enemy seems triumphant ; but in the end, Mr. Malam assures us, he passes through to victory. The City Keep deserves a hearty welcome for its frank concern with spiritual problems, and for the vividness with which the local colour of Esterville is conveyed. Homer, his newspaper colleagues, and the incidents which attack his beliefs, have been seen and understood. There is no doubt about it : boyhood is like this. Mr. Malam is over- fond of telling us what Homer thought and felt, and the end of the book is not so convincing as the rest ; but he is to be congratulated upon a sincere and moving first novel.

Mr. Faulkner's book is in a class apart, and I approach it with diffidence. Most people have had the experience of starting to learn a new job or a new language. For a while nothing appears but a mass of detail—objects seen suddenly in a fog, unrelated, without background. Then, quite unexpectedly, the fog lifts : whole patches of ground become visible, and objects which one remembers merely as objects take on significance in association with others. We realize that, improbable though it seemed, we have actually picked up more from those first unrelated impressions than would have been possible from an orderly presentation. Reading The Sound and the Fury is like learning a new job or a new language. The first chapters are told through the perceptions of Benjy, a congenital idiot : objects suddenly seen in a fog, unrelated by sense or ttme. Then there is a leap eighteen years backwards, to the perceptions of Quentin, uncle of the idiot's Quentin, who killed himself at Harvard. Next we come to the eldest son of the family, and his troubles with the present-day Quentin ; and, finally, to a detached commentary, which winds up the matter.

I do not as a rule like difficult books, perhaps because I am lazy, nor do I like roundabout methods of telling a story. In this case, however; the difficulty is worth mastering, and the method essential to the effect. Mr. Faulkner has chosen a technique which says what he has to say, and I cannot see how he could have said it otherwise. I have read every word of his extraordinary story, and a good deal of it twice. The idiot's part is magnificent, and, even by itself, would prove Mr. Faulkner to be a fine imaginative artist. In conception and execution this work has that kind of newness, and gives that shock to the imagination, which puts its author in the running for the highest stakes. Mr. Richard Hughes was the right man to introduce this book, and his introduction is both helpful and sympathetic. Let me add my voice to his, in entreating readers not to be discouraged by the book's initial difficulty. I cannot pretend yet to know how good it is in its own class, but the class is the highest in twentieth-century fiction. L. A. G. STRONG.