New Novels
PETER VANS1ITART'S The Game and the Ground (Max Reinhardt, 12s. 6d.) is something that many novels claim to be and aren't—a story of our time; a story, that is, that arises entirely from the peculiar conditions of the last years, one that would scarcely make sense outside our present climate. Out of the post-war turmoil of some unspecified Central European country have arisen, in an unseemly scum, gangs of homeless and savage urchins, some few of which, sheltered but hardly softened, have been taken in by two brothers whose large country house they have turned into a camp. Two years the camp has existed when home comes a third brother, Nicky, a charmer from childhood with tales of a heroic war in the Resistance, but in fact, it turns out,, a pretty slimy Fascist record. This Nicky gains such a hold over the children that the place is in danger of complete moral disintegration : the principle of the 'hero' being once established, he grows to toppling mythological proportions, and in the end, after he has refused to leave, is condemned by the tacit agreement of all the camp adults, and killed by his brothers. Life—of a sort—begins again.
All this—its political overtones, its urgent contemporary symbols, its violence, the bestial conditions of mind and body in which so recently so much of Europe lived; its past, seen in the great house as a gracious but unimportant backcloth to the primi- tive present of gang-loyalty, knife-discipline, promiscuity, and animal high spirits; its careful balance of individual and political personalities—I find intensely interesting. What I quarrel with is Mr. Vansittart's method, which, though it does not destroy, mitigates the effectiveness of what he has to say. The turgid, hit- and.miss arrangement of events, the thundery prose, at once obscure and spectacular, the frankly confusing passages of description—these occasionally help to conjure the groping, darkened world of the camp, but more often merely shroud the effort of penetration—if only for a glimpse of neo-Liberalism, European fashion, 1956, its weaknesses, ardours, disenchantment,
and hope. .
Herman Wouk's The aty Boy (Cape, 15s.). cannot compare in scope with his (in fact later) Marjorie Morningstar, but it has the same sort of endless urban gusto in things and scenes and places and people, in meals and gatherings and talk and the over- laying of old with new. His city boy is again Jewish, a curious Bronx hero, being fat, studious, and teacher's pet; an eleven-year- old with the unfortunate name of Herbie who likes red-headed girls, and food, and being top of the class, all about equally. His world is curiously adult, not so much an immature as a miniature version of the real world, in which love, politics, finance, and intrigue all play their important parts. The book's best part takes 19 though you may afterwards wonder what was so enth alkol about his book, there's no denying, at the time of reading him, br us to a children's summer camp to which Herbie and his 5i0 are enticed for an expensive summer : a warning to parents 1131 to 'fruit the evidence of children's letters, which may be writtell under the mesmeric power of a supper of sausages and ice-t real° Mr. Wouk, come to think of it, is pretty mesmeric himself,
i glittering eye and the rest of the hypnotic story-le paraphernalia. assi"
Which is not the case with Vilhelm Moburg, whose m saga about the peasant emigrations from Sweden to America century ago, The Emigrants (Max Reinhardt, 15s.), the first his novels to reach us in English, is an immensely laborious w01,; but not—to my taste at least—very enthralling. All the same, you are prepared to take it slowly, to gear your pace to the 13N of its action, and to accept from the start all sorts of folksy 80 and illustrative stories to hold up what action there is, the will at least start (AT in a fit state of mind to appreciate its siggc qualities. And a dignified, impressive enough book it is, `vilAh something compassionate and even heroic about its scope sweep. Yet my heart involuntarily sank when, having taken 3116 large pages on the journey to America, the emigrants stePPetl ashore in the last paragraph, closely followed by a note to 5`/Y that 'The Emigrants is the first volume of a planned trilogy.'
a foretaste, in fact. . Yall'
A welcoming blast on my critical trumpet for Audrey Ma
who, in The Changing Prospect (Longmans, 12s. 6d.), has Pt" duced a thoroughly professional first novel—a study in why t might call social temperaments, being concerned with the cil effects of environment on temperament and vice versa. E‘ the story's 'I'—is the product of seedy Bohemianism: fatb3r' failed writer, mother a touring actress, sister on the lunatic filgi of literature, and a childhood of endlessly changing digs, foal' IA insecurity, and social 'unbelonging.' Along comes Al11°I.' prosperous, agreeable, not too dull, and proposes; and his° , Edith, eager to be taken to its cosy bosom, off to meet the i55 in Yorkshire. But, alas, things there are far from cosy, and M,1
soP
Mayall gives as grisly a picture of English domesticity of thu as ever I came across—the large draughty house, the dogs del'latir ing endless rainy exercise, the fat schoolgirl daughter, the du1100 the suspicion of outsiders, social or temperamental, the distil"c charm, warmth, or spontaneity, the peculiar upper-middld coldness of manner and even of temperament. Beside it, 11; l 't Edith's gaol-bird father and feckless mother acquire acontr.11 charm, and Edith herself, torn between her longing for stab (in the person of Arnold) and love (in the person of still all°01 unpublished author, met rather improbably in the middle rill" moors), succumbs in the end to love and (perhaps) squalor4f
0 1 1
perhaps not, for she seems a determined young person who d yet push her Harry into the Arts Council or the BBC. Wb°16`4' the outcome, it all adds up to something extremely comPewnV at once polished and (in a sidelong sort of way) passionate, 3 031 combination at this stage, and quite lethally accurate wit praise heaven, taking those obvious pot-shots at society thtt meet so often and so tediously among the ladies. Frederic Raphael, another young beginner, has far less surc touch, and his Obbligato (Macmillan, 13s. 6d.), though 80:07. high-spirited, is too frenetically eager to amuse. Occas101, crooners being a moderately good target for farce, it does, btl single joke is spread rather thinly, like school sugar over a ate expanse of porridge. There is something very engaging, th0.01 about Mr. Raphael's style, which makes me hope for a better to expend itself on next time. Roland Gant's Five of a Kind (Cape, 15s.) is a routine servitpc'or war book, exciting but banal, about the fortunes of five MO c momentarily come together in a PoW camp and eXc"v# addresses, as in those innumerable stories about schoolgirls cie" agree to compare notes after ten years of life. Well-constr° ( tS j energetic, plausible; with a dullish style but fascinating 13- r' makes good, tough reading, not for schoolgirls, but with n°
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