Fiction

Never So Young Again. By Dan Brennan. (Allen and Unwin. 8s. 6d.)

Berlin Hotel. By Vicki Baum. (Michael Joseph. 9s. 6d.) Target Island. By John Brophy. (Collins. 75. 6d.)

THE three novels under review here all draw material from the war in the air. Never So 'Young Again is a first novel by a young American, Mr. Dan Brennan, who, as a rear gunner, has flown with the Royal Air Force. His book has numerous weaknesses ; one can pick holes in his technique ; jib at his plot ; regret that he has read Mr. Ernest Hemingway not wisely but too well ; sneer at his lack of objectivity and balance. And yet when his work is compared with that of such expert and practised writers of fiction as Miss Vicki Baum and Mr. John Brophy, it is the fumbling beginner, with all his clumsiness, who makes the deepest impression. The authors of Berlin Hotel and Target Island have entertainment as their primary object ; the stories they tell are fast, slick and shiny ; both books could be made into highly successful commercial films. They will meet the demands of those who ask no more from the novel than a few heart throbs and some large dollops of local colour. But such readers had better eschew Mr. Brennan's work, for while he can provide both colour and throbs plentifully, his aim is different since the solution of his problem is not to be found in action, his ending is in failure instead of success. Like himelf, his central figure, a young American, enlists in the Canadian Air Force at the outbreak of war, and after preliminary training comes to England. After a time he falls in love with a subaltern in the A.T.S. The go away together, and she is killed in an air-raid. The effect of this on Mack, already strained. by the hazards of night bombing ov Germany, are grim and painful. Instead of a gallery of heroes Mr. Brennan attempts the individual under the uniform - con s. quently the pain and the pathos become more moving and less remote.

Those who read Grand Hotel will have a pretty fair idea of wha Miss Baum has to offer in her latest volume. Here once again th people under the roof of a de luxe hotel get into a wide variety emotional entanglements, with the speed of express trains. The hotel staff play even more minor parts than usual, but to make u for this there is a gallant underground worker in the shape of pageboy who has broken away from the Hitler Youth movement Amid air raids and alarms the characters flaunt and flutter with th agility and precision of expertly handled marionettes. Princip among them is a beautiful young actress (the usual nit-wit) wh owes her successful career and her Parisian wardrobe to the fa that she presented the Fiihrer with a bouquet on his entry int Austria. Then there is an anti-Nazi general in love with het. Tb hero is a young student leader, who, having been sentenced death, escapes after the execution of his -twin-sister and is 'hiding the hotel. The Gestapo are on his track, but the actress save him and falls in love with him, too. Needless to say, he soon cure her Naziolatry. Their escapes -arc too numerous to detail, bu eventually he is smuggled out of the hotel in the unsuspectm company of a fighter-pilot also in love with the actress. The min° folk include a renegade Englishman, a German dramatist, " hostess " and various other oddments, all of whom lend coin plexity and speed to the scheme. Miss Baum gets a large bouque for her technique ; she pushes over, or aside, any obstacle that get in her way with the ease and ferocity of a champion all-in wrestler.

After such virtuosity, Mr. Brophy, for all his speed, caree along like a lame duck. He lacks all the persuasiveness with whi-

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Miss Baum helps one over mountains and mole-hills alike. The right tension is missing ; obstacles have to be gone round or climbed over, so that one remains a little dubious and unresponsive in spite of the dabs of local colour, the nice young flying-men, the nice young women, the decent Maltese, the nasty Nazis. Here again are major and minor figures, love-affairs, raids and alarms, amid the panoply of modern war. And yet nothing has been added to the epic of Malta that one did not already know. However, its film possibilities will be obvious to the cinema fan.

JOHN HAMPSON.