NEW NOVELS
Hard truth
BARRY COLE
The Cost of Living Like This James Kenna- way (Longmans 30s) The Hungry Grass Richard Power (Bodley Head 30s) The Cardinal in Exile Hugh Ross William- son (Michael Joseph 30s) Clancy, My Friend, My Friend Patrick Ryan (Frederick Muller 25s) Businessmen as Lovers Rosemary Tonks (Bodley Head 21s) Tike Jonathan Strong (Bodley Head 30s) Blind Love V. S. Pritchett (Chatto and Windus 30s) James Kennaway died last year at the age of forty. Although it is pleasing to note that his novels, which include Tunes of Glory and Some Gorgeous Accident, were highly praised by the critics, it is saddening to realise that his name is known to only a small number of people. Unless acclaimed by other media, novelists in Britain rarely gain the public recognition they deserve. This, together with the unsurprising news that we are very low down in the inter- national novel-buying charts, is depressing, the sort of situation that leads a reviewer of Kennaway's Household Ghosts to describe the book as the work of 'a lonely and dedicated master'.
Any comparatively early death is a sorrowful event but the death of Kennaway, on the evidence of The Cost of Living Like This, must be regarded as a deprivation in a wider sense. The story is simple, involv- ing the loves of two women for Julian, a slowly dying man. One is his wife, a hard- headed, witty and self-assured woman of his own age; the other a young office girl whose greatest asset to Julian is her 'instinct for survival'.
Though aware of his approaching death from cancer Julian finds his own insuffi- ciencies too great to prevent his giving additional pain to others: they are some- thing he can hold on to, something that ;night avoid the coming 'loneliness' of death. And so he involves both woman and girl, knowing that however much they fight to retain or regain his love, the end will be the same. A moving and serious book, the harrowing theme is heightened by Kenna- way's extraordinary ability to convince us that what he is saying appears not only real but true.
'Irish' novels have a peculiar tradition and popularity of their own and I often suspect, probably wrongly, that publishers Owl authors into their production. The ingredients seem invariably the same: ageing priest battling against intractable superiors, a rural or city slum community, sacred and secular conflict with a dash of emergent politics. Richard Power's The Hungry Grass (even the title sounds familiar) has all of these. Father Tom Conroy is an ageing country priest 'doubt- ful of his vocation' but full of feeling for humanity, and the author traces and describes his life and relationships with, happily, great skill. In his descriptions of the land, Power achieves a prose equivalent to the poetry of Seamus Heaney and his dialogue ensures that the book doesn't fall into a 'Romantic Ireland' bog. There is much that touches poetry without becoming overtly 'poetic', as in this passage: 'It was the countryside of his boyhood and he was moving around its borders, shut out from it. So complete was it without him, so disem- bodied did he feel, that he expected any moment to see his own figure drift pain- fully across it, a black shape in hat and drooping coat'. Philip Larkin has a poem Wilich produces almost the same image.
While confessing to a dislike of 'histori- cal' novels, it is difficult not to be impressed, even awed, by The Cardinal in Exile, penultimate volume of Hugh Ross William- son's The Passing of the Plantagenets. Deal- ing with the career of Cardinal Pole during the decade of 1542-1552, it makes a com- plicated religious period almost compre- hensible. More than fifty footnotes testify to Mr Williamson's scholarly industry and almost preclude lay criticism.
As implied by the title, Clancy, My Friend, My Friend, which deals with Irish- Cockney childhood in London's East End during the 'thirties, Patrick Ryan has a tendency to sentimentalise. Clancy is Paddy Ryan's friend and mentor, a con-man in the making, always ready with schemes for instant wealth. A series of comic black and white cameos, the book would make good television fodder, particularly when dealing (autobiographically?) with the Blackshirts. He came in and jammed his manhood against my knee and slowly, slowly poured the coffee. I think it was a better deal than bosoms', says Mimi, a leading character in Rosemary Tonks's Businessmen as Lovers.
Full of girlish giggles and squeaks, written in a breathless prose, the story of two girls' encounters gasps from page to page relieved only by little puffs of mildly dotty humour. Exasperating.
Finally, two collections of short stories. None of us can tell, apparently, how we really felt when young. 'Only the young know what it is to be young', says the blurb for Tike. And Jonathan Strong, being 'young', is supposed to tell it like it is.
Unfortunately his fausse naiveté is arch and artful and he tells his tales with a post- Salinger tranquillity that denies any sort of immediacy. The title novella is a neat and mildly enjoyable piece marred by a preening seIf-iegard and improbably handsome characters. Five other stories extend the mood but make me wonder if this twenty four year old was ever young.
In complete contrast, the stories in V. S. Pritchett's Blind Love are the product of an experienced and dedicated craftsman. He writes mostly of a close, quiet world where gentle breeding and civilised behaviour are the norm, wherd a fading, etiquette-dated society feeds upon itself, its memories alit its follies. Mr Pritchett is a stylist )h the best sense, particularly in the title dory, which tells of a blind solicitor and hiss ove for his secretary-housekeeper. Those who believe that Bloomsburyland is dead are, for good or bad, mistaken.
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