Fiction

By WILLIAM PLOMER

The Ocean. By Paul; Nizovoy. Translated by John Coarnoa. (Hanish Hamilton. 7s. t3d.) Tare Harvest. By Eleanor Peters. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) David and, Joanna. By Goorge Blake. (Faber. 7s. fici.) -Surprise Item. 13y Nikolai Gubsky. (Heinemann. 7s. 6c1.) The Phoenix's Nest. By Elizabeth Jenkins. (Gollanez. 7s. Oki.) HALF the people who write novels seem to have little idea of the difficulty and complexity _of the problems they set them- selves. If some of them undertake tasks which a Tolstoi or a Flaubert might hesitate to tackle, and dash off a hundred thousand words where the masters of fiction might fear to put pen to paper, that is in itself a sign of the limited imagina- t ion which can be contented with easy effects, or banal or super- ficial ones. It is curious to .note how often books by these enterprising and often quite talented writers are either much too long or much too short. Either they do not tell us nearly enough or a- selective faculty is wanting and they give us all sorts of information that leaves us cold and unenlightened; so that we are left with deonvietion that they have not under- stood clearly enough the nature of their subjects. None of the five writers under review has achieved a perfect solution of his difficulties. Two have set out to describe pioneering families in remote places, families that hack their way to a livelihood, so to speak, through the local colour ; two others wish to tell us something of changes occurring in these islands at the present day ; and one has had the temerity to try a reconstruction of life in Elizabethan times.

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The Ocean tells of a strong, silent Russian who turns his back on towns and, having saved up a little money, elects to settle in a lonely place-in the far north and live by fishing and hunting.. He takes a woman with him, and looks forward to the pattering of tiny feet in the great open spaces.

" Ho, William, like: a mighty, fruitful tree, would make the beginning of a whole grove. With strong roots, with a healthy sap, with an invincible will to life. Remarkable ! "

Remarkable, indeed. Besides being a healthy sap, William is a solemn stick, and, although as resourceful as Robinson CrUsoe, he is not in every respect a good companiOn to his Vera, an it is not to be wondered at that the Northern Lights begin to play on her nerves. However, they make a living and raise children, not all of whom wish to remain in the nest. There are some " powerful " scenes of primitive passion where men are men and beasts are beasts, but all the best parts of the book are directly concerned with such things as fishing and hunting, with seals, wolves, walruses, reindeer, and journeys in storms and blizzards over ice and snow. There is a particularly telling account of an invasion by lemmings : in two days William was literally eaten out of house and home :

"In the provision shed and in the yard everything had been destroyed ; all the products had been oaten, of the seal hides there was not left a trace. Even the barrels themselves, and the cases, had been half chewed ; of the fishing equipment only the ends of the ropes remained." . .

The chronology of the book is not precisely worked out, but towards the end the Allies are in Archangel. The translation is often peculiar. " The multitudinous feathered host was gaily - feeding on the gifts of the sea. . . ." " Vera said:

' Look. What a noisy life exists on this bird-inhabited'eliff ' "

Perhaps Vera was using one of those books of handy phrases for use in foreign parts. Again, " At a neighbouring hillock there flashed by silhouettes of large quadrupeds." The book was printed in America and type and paper are unusually pleasant : I recommend them to the notice of those given to the mass-production of- fiction.

Miss Eleanor Peters introduces us to a family, perhaps best described as Britishers, who have settled in a valley beneath the Andes. The actual material is magnifieenta fertile landscape, romantic natives, racial antipathies, an' unpleasant old man, eager young women. The manners are colonial, the life patriarchal : " Candelight blossomed within. Abner, sleek and brushed and

conscious of his stiff new trousers, sorted the gramophone discs, his hands careful. Still light shone on the cloth, the flowers, the knives carefully polished with river sand ; on the cake, golden. brown and rich as bumble-bees, big round as the milk-pan in which it was cooked. Grandfather sat near the fire, his great beard coveriii! a new panuelo knotted loosely about his neck, He read his Bibb., and glanced now and then towards the distant wagon-road."

That is so true to type, with the big hands, big cake, great beard and Bible, that it reads almost like a parody. And indeed Miss Peters is far too generous with her domestic vignettes : she makes one feel that she must have written the book without bothering to take off her apron. But still,

she has produced a detailed picture of an unfamiliar kind of life, and though the detail is diffuse and the sentiment lush, true observation, of which there is a good deal, shines with a light not easily put out. Perhaps the most interesting hap- pening is that one of the girls, Justine, falls in love with a cattle thief named Alejo Vargas. As a Chileno he is looked down on by her family ; also, his father has been murdered by

her grandfather :

" The night. was vastallout her, deep as heaven, and all aquiver with strange secret things that thrilled through it like still music ! It called her, drew her, and down on the bank the trees hung black and still ! What would Mama say ? "

Alejo is rather too much the fizzing charmer. " The wind," we read, " was a poem in his night7black hair." A:poem by

D. H. Lawrence, no doubt. Further, his eyes were like mountain pools, and " under its silken panuelo his throat curved strong and cruel, and graceful as the throat of a young unbroken colt." Justine eloped with him, was cut off by her family, and obliged to go native. Before long it was plain that the marriage was a flop, for Justine and Alejo belonged to

different races, " with different thoughts and ideals, different perceptions," and the dark gods, about whom we used, tp hear

so much, do not always make :faittiful. liusbands:' The book is longish, hai a happy ending, and is more likely toPlease women than men.

Mr. George Blake transports us to Glasgow, where a nice

boy called David Lusk lives in a stuffy house with a repressed aunt, a malade imaginaire uncle, and a benevolent lodger. He goes out on sChiayele into the cotititrYYand takt*US tar,

from the kailyard •

" There were revealed:to him 'for' the first' time tio eje-ment3 of space and height; of distanCe and colour=afreedoni and beauty under the high spring clouds moving rapidly at the urge of the mellow sou'-west" wind. Behind the stinging of tears in his eyes there was a vague: awareness of endless, lovely, dangerous possi- bilities. Behind That again was.a dumbresentnient.ed,tiakalmost incredible-fief thar-he, David Lusk,:had by the intolerable tkiances of life been denied this vision until his 'nineteenth year."

Fortunately the " lovely possibility " becomes ,a certainty :in the shape of another cyclist, Joanna Cree, and before long " the half-emancipated slaves of a civilisation-built on indus- trialism and the doctrines of John Calvin were holding their mad conventicle of sun-worship." In fact, Mr. Blake is interested in " the struggle of simple, imprisoned people, of Davids and Joatinas everywhere, to ,escape into freedom and peace, wherein love might blossom sweetly,and life be full of simplicity." A pleasing subject, • and Mr.-Fillake's treatment of it is sunny, perhaps too sunny. But it was a good idea to use the bicycle as, a symbol of insurgent youth. It is one of the weaknesses of Surprise Item that it is as poor in symbols as in visual imagery. Mr. Gubsky,_ always thoughtful, is too prone to let his writing appear like a stream of intelligent but casual talk. A retrospective passage will give an idea of

his theme :

" Ronald . . . had tried to build' a sajitli' career and a safe marriage ; they had both collapsed . . . He had fallen in love with an idea and a woman ; and his lyrical exaltation had led hie. to murder. His connection with Communism seemed severed . . .

The Phoenix's Nest had better be described as light historical

reading. It is an attempt to give us that impossible thing. the private lives of eminent Elizabethans, including Marlowe. Kyd, Greene, Raleigh and Dr. Dee. In books of this sort the machinery is apt to creak (" It was April now in the year 1590; _but thiksPring there were feWer_Walks in the fields for

the two sisters-',), and th'e " colourful 7. passages tend to be a trial --(" Marloire was dzrp .asleep -and- dreaming. that' he 'appmadied the walls of a beleaguered city- in the train of a