Fruit and nut
Barbara Trapido
Getting it Right Elizabeth Jane Howard (Hamish Hamilton £7.95) The Samurai Shusaku Endo, translated by Van C. Gessel (Peter Owen £8.95) lizabeth Jane Howard's shy male hairdresser Gavin — Virgin at 31 and acne-ridden, living at home with Mum and Dad in his attic which he has furnished as a bulwark against Mum's suburban tastes, in- dulges his tentative romantic yearnings through Vuillard paintings of women until he has a dramatic experience at a party after which his life isn't the same. It sets him on the road to greater self-assertion and in the space of the book's remaining two hundred
pages he becomes embroiled in a bizarre chain of entanglements with anorexic heiresses, rich wives of Knightsbridge in- terior designers, foreign gays and, finally, with Jenny, his teenage salon junior. Small wonder that his sister's homely candidate for Gavin's hand, the unfortunate Muriel, is nowhere. I found Gavin's sudden flower- ing not altogether convincing; nor his sanguine relationship with Jenny who only wants her mind improving with a little ex- posure to Mozart and her hairstyle changed to make her an idyllic partner. But to carp would be ungrateful in view of the very great pleasure the book brings in the tang of its social comedy. Miss Howard does petit bourgeois interiors a treat. Exteriors too, as with Uncle Keith's New Barnet House which embodies every constructional feature from rough cast to stained glass of `wine gum hues'. An easy target no doubt, but executed faultlessly throughout and gently too.
There is Peter, doing up his newly-wed nest on a rigorous five year plan. Horren- dous half decade stretching ahead, of Dulux and cork tiles. There is Harry, the very nice gay masseur, whose linguistic idiosyncracies are always just right. And there is Mum who is a satirist's triumph. Mum who is incapable of expressing affec- tion through physical contact, expresses it instead through the unremitting provision of food — food which alternates between the best of British stodge and the more har- rowing women's mag interpretations of foreign delights. 'The recipe said to use that nasty unsweetened chocolate', Mum says of her Mexican chicken, 'but I paid no regard to that. There's half a pound of Cadbury's Fruit and Nut in there'. Her sycophantic performance over breakfast in the presence of the appalling Lady Minerva is side- splitting. Best china and Mum tense with terror lest the old man flush the loo while Privilege is gracing the house. Miss Howard has clearly undertaken a great deal of fieldwork in hairdressing salons to produce this engaging book.
In his ambitious and moving historical novel Shusaku Endo takes a protracted journey embarked upon by a party of 17th century Japanese envoys, in a specially con- structed galleon, built to the specifications of stranded Spanish sailors. The party, under the leadership of a scheming and fer- vent Spanish priest, sails first to Mexico and then to Europe in an attempt to bargain Japan's right to trade with Mexico against Catholic Europe's right to proseletise among the Japanese. The mission fails and during the party's pitiably interminable so- journ abroad, Japan's policy changes to one of unyielding isolationism and rigorous persecution of Christians. The envoys have meanwhile converted as a painful expedient in their attempt to carry out their duty to the Council of Elders which sent them.
They duly return only to experience the bit- ter irony of the changing tide. The goals of the mission for which they have endured beyond reason have been abandoned and their status as Christian converts leads
ultimately to martyrdom. One of these en- voys, the samurai who, at this bizarre bap- tism in Madrid Cathedral, felt only revul- sion for the alien, emaciated figure of Christ, comes, through his own suffering, to identify with that same figure on the cross. The journey is the metaphor for his spiritual journey. The complex and differ- ing personalities develop beautifully under the pressures of isolation and the writing Is memorable in its impact. The voyage with its bright schools of silver flying fish; its sighting of the first whale; the salt-white rock and giant cacti of Mexico in their im- pact upon the Samurai who has never before left his marshland is like watching the world grow round. The marshland itself, with its curious silence and prevalent snowfall; its harsh, enduring peasant life,. has the quality of an illuminated book 01 hours. Winner Harris is a smashing intrigue in London's night club land. Sam the hero's at once larger than life and terrifically credi- ble. He is a Battersea boy who makes 11 from running a sandwich bar, bought On the winnings of National Service poker games, to ritzy casino tycoon. That's until a bent copper in Gucci shoes does him for murder. The book is about his attempts t0 reinstate himself, but trouble follows h1111 around. In pursuit of his own enemies he runs into bigger things and the result is 3 hair-raising chase through the Mediterra- nean in pursuit of a beautiful woman nailed up in a crate. There is a memorable night- time landing in Sicily amid the cleft tore" stones of Mafia victims. Some very 80°,(1' very authentic characters — Sam's "re,' especially, and also the American Kauff- man, and the sex, also, is no less good 1°' being suitably glossy. Some touching vignettes too which contribute to the book s class: Sam's boyhood friend Jack's meettn,,,g with his future wife in the auction saler°°' over the candlestick is lovely. Stuart Evans's novel concerns members of the urbane but dissillusioned centre-01" left in Britain whose lives intersect, ticularly at lunch and in bed, with the,,,,11':, evitability of spirograph patterns. ,fie evitability lies between their political idealism and their personal short-comings. Thd dialogue is clever, epigrammatic 0,1_ politically astute. The trouble is that t11" book is so dauntingly realistic in its endless e dinner party talk and so up-to-the-rn111_,ut, in its constant references to Boycott, Beal Heath, the T and GW and so on, that leaves the reader feeling like an ignomini?" eavesdropper in the corridors of the eltri; Many of the characters are fellows of Souls, successful merchant bankers, pp:0l nent media feminists, ex-wives of tycoonsi or daughters of eminent politicians. Lots fe them are writing novels, through which t.11,11 author displays a kaleidoscopic flair `ate style, but it makes the novel very long. 1"", book is full of brilliance, but a little:0r groupy, with its characters called ‘C. H. , o,t `Mikki' and 'Charley' when they arer,./,.t male. This is the third novel in Stu Evans's Windmill Hill sequence.
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