Fiction
I SHOULD very much like to turn a congress of psychologists loose on—or in—Gormenghast. They would find abundant fodder, particularly, I should guess, in its concluding chapters. The rest of us can take Mr. Peake's fantasy as we find it ; and all who do not resent a world so far unlike our own that the resemblances seem odder than the differences will find high entertainment. Mr. Peake is not everybody's money, but, if you like his drawings, you will enjoy his book. The story is less important than the telling. The House of Groan declines, and the characters we have met already, Titus, Fuschia, Steerpike and Co., go through a series of mannered but vigorous antics. At times these antics are tinged with normal life. Mister Bellgrove and Irma Prune- squalor move on recognisable ground :- " The tremendous gulf between the sexes yawned—and an abyss, terrifying and thrilling, sheer and black as the arbour in which they sat ; a darkness wide, dangerous, imponderable and littered with the wrecks of broken bridges. But his hand stayed where it was."
So far, so good. We are all together, from Horizon to the Saturday Evening. Post. The latter's customers may feel a ripple of disquiet a few lines further on :— " ' Irma ! ' He drew her to him. There was less give ' in her body than in a cakestand."
A minute or so later, they withdraw, shaking bewildered heads.
" Her body had simultaneously rhythmed itself into a stance both statuesque and snake-like, her thorax, amplified with its hot-water bottle bosom, positioned in air so far to the left of her pelvis as to have no visible means of support . . . . To say that the frozen silence contracted itself into a yet tighter globe of ice were to under-rate the exquisite tension and to shroud it in words."
Position yo'self, sister. Under-rate yo'self, brudder. I should perhaps add that the publishers describe these as comic episodes. Even so, they do not give an unfair idea of Mr. Peake's approaOh. His writing is violent, decorative, heraldic, and—let us give his publishers the last word— ebullient. If you enjoy these qualities, they are here in plenty. Gormenghast is more than a sequel to Titus Groan. It has the sari- e power, the same effortless command of the sinister and the queer, and a greater measure of gontrol.
Miss Kay Cicellis is afraid that, because she hgs never been to England but learned English from governesses, she will not be accepted as an English writer, but only as a foreigner who writes in English. She need not worry. There is nothing Greek or French about her use of our language, which could not respond better to her sensitive direction if she had used it all her life. These stories are brilliant in themselves and phenomenal from a girl in her early twenties. Beautifully composed and written, they convey with authority both sensation and thought, and deal more tentatively with action. If Miss Cicellis runs any dangerpit is perhaps that of projecting her own intense sensitiveness of perception on too many of her characters. Miss Sackville-West, in a foreword, hopes she will write a novel. Many will agree with her. Mr. Milton's three stories of Vienna in defeat are loosely built, clear and easy to read. It is less than fair to say that they remind me, somewhat to their disadvantage, of a book written some twenty-five years ago, Defeat, by Geoffrey Moss. In fact, there are similarities of approach. objectivity, irony, and-pity. Mr. Milton is livelier, and one of his stories looks at the lighter side of life : but, as the earlierbook was very good indeed, this can fall short of it and yet be good in its own right.
L. A. G. STRONG.
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