30 APRIL 1932, Page 26

Fiction

BY L. A. G. STRONG.

The Bright TeMptatlon. By Austin Clarke. (Allen and Unwin.

7s. 6d.) 'fi[-nE are novels which refuse to let the average reader judge them simply as works of art. FroM their first pages, they touch his beliefs and prejudices, tempting him to regard them as a challenge to his way of thinking. Many of D. H. Lawrence's novels had this controversial quality, and Memoirs of Other Fronts has it in high degree. How the average reader receives this story will depend largely upon his view of sexual ethics, of conscientious objectors in time of war, and of the degree to which certain physical processes may be mentioned in public. It is possible that to him Olivia will seem pre- cisely what the narrator on one occasion called her, the affair between Erika and Behar just an affair between a stupid woman and a brute, and the narrator's prison experi- ences little more than he deserved. I shall differ, but that is beside the mark ; for none of these points have any bearing upon the merits of the book as literature, with which we are alone concerned. " To our left, the Eiffel Tower rose lightly with one enormous stride " : when a phrase like that occurs at the beginning of a book, the book is going to be worth. reading. I have read every word of Memoirs of Other Fronts, some of it more than once, and it seems to me both admirable and true. It is not a book for the amateur either of literature or of life. It is the work of a strong mind, sensitive to suffering, hating to be set apart from the majority of his fellows, and detesting cruelty. The prison chapters are magnificent. The forcible feeding and death of Behar should give pause even to the most diehard school of thinker. The book goes into my bookshelf ; and I do not keep many.

The next three books have all a smack of swashbuckling and of the sea. The Life and Adventures of Aloysius O'Calla- ghan is the sort of book which publishers describe, about Christmas time, as " for boys of all ages." Aloysius himself is an improbable blend of Humphrey Clinker, Robinson Crusoe, and Andrew Carnegie. He began life as a stable boy in Ireland, took to sea, was ship-wrecked, and watched the only other survivor cooked -and eaten by cannibals. This episode makes lively reading. Later he joined a Dime Museum of freaks as Crusoe O'Callaghan, found gold in Robson City, became a pugilist, helped Santa Anna to weather various revolutions, and ended up as its Big Noise, the millionaire proprietor of an exclusive line of Pickled Peaches. He was - bold as brass (and, of course, true as steel), and was so pic- turesque in his speech that Mr. Washington Metcalfe has been constrained to let him relate about every other paragraph of the book in his own words.

Miss Muir has had the excellent idea of treating a pirate story from the point of view of a modern psychological novelist. I am not sure that she has entirely succeeded, since the ideal proportion of blood and thunder, always a nice mixture to determine, will vary greatly with the individual reader. Personally, I feel that a little more blood and thunder, a little more dialogue, and a little less analysis, would have improved her story. It concerns the decline of Barbaloot, a seventeenth-century Dutch pirate. Confident and happy in the prowess of his new ship, the ' Wolf,' he captures a Spanish ship, the ' San Cristobal.' On board is a woman, Eugenia, and her little daughter, Marina. Woe to the pirate who falls in love ! In this case, he falls into disgrace as well, degenerates, and takes to drink. He goes to live in Holland, and is joined by Marina, who has had a hand-to-mouth childhood in Alderney. A Jew tries to murder him, and assaults Marina. She, being a young lady of spirit, stabs the Jew, leaves Barbaloot, and elopes with a lover whom she does not love. Miss Muir writes well, and her analysis of character is skilfully done. My only complaint is that, for me, the proportion of analysis to action seems excessive.

The Maiden is another tale of the sea. It opens admirably,

" ' Apron Jack,' said the man with the broken nose, ' is a good woman.' "

To find out precisely what he meant, and what Apron Jack had to do with Maria Kuntzen or The Maiden, you Must read to the end of Miss Johnston's exciting story. Maria was only happy when she wore a man's dungarees and prowled about the quays of San Francisco. While she was still in her teens, she sailed as mate on her father's ship. She was not much given to talking : on another voyage, she let the captain drown, and never said a word. She kept herself to herself, and her fellow-voyagers looked askance at her red hair, her square pale face, and the great. scar that ran down her cheek. If they had known her sex, they would have looked more askance still, but that secret was kept froth all but her family. She went through a mutiny on the 'Seagull,' and emerged from it full Captain Kuntzen. She knew love and hatred. The end of the book, ingenious, if unlikely, it would not be fair to give away. A good, vivid, vigorous tale.

The Bright Temptation is a very unusual piece of work. Ostensibly an idyllic romance of Ireland in the days of the Seven Churches, it is in essence a light and delicate satin• upon the Irish fear of sex. The picture of Torbach, the illuminator, busy over a marvellous design in the great monastic school of Cluanmore, is a happy image for a book illuminated so richly by its author's delight in words. Aldan, it young student, snatched away from the school by an accident, falls into the hands of three brawling warriors, and-is rescued, as he thinks, by a miracle. The hand that loosed his bonds and the ,sweet voice that whispered in his, ear turn out to belong to Ethna, a lovely girl of his own age. The two hide together in the woods, sleep in the cromlech where Diarmuid and Grania slept, and learn to love one another. Before the lesson is complete, Aidan is torn away, to undergo fearful adventures and be admonished by a saint before he can find his beloved once again. Mr. Clarke fills his book with coloured words. At one time they pour out like a waterfall in bright sunlight, at another they roar boisterously, at another they arc quiet and at peace. There is some really lovely writing in these pages. Here is a boisterous sample. The fat bursar of Cluanmore, loaded with plate, has got stuck in a stairway : " At a word from the Abbot, the clerks were called down again. but the schoolmen wore already discussing the dilemma—to pull Coleanon out or to push him in was to endanger the precious vessels and ornaments. They argued the problem, they advanced hypo- theses and proved them by the strict rule of syllogism, they deduced the particular from the general, they proceeded from their major premise to minor premise, they met affirmative proposition by rime- tivo proposition, they questioned precedents and detected hateful fallacies in each other's undistributed middle terms. Their argu- ments were so eloquent and sustained that all but the masons and carpenters were lost in admiration. For the time being the downfall of the books and the plight of the unfortunate Coleanon were for- gotten. This was known as the Lesser Disputation at Cluanmore."

Here is something quite different :

" She came towards him with those swathes. She had gathered so many that the ferny tendrils hid the jewel at her neck, climbed and clung among her own curls. 0, she might have borne the dim, green summer towards him, so tenderly her pale face was fronded, half hidden by them."