FICTION
By E. B. C. JONES
The Rising Tide. By M. J. Farrell. (Collins. 7s. 6d.) AESTHETIC merit is one thing ; readability is another. There are great and deeply satisfying novels which are not, in the sense I am using the word, readable : they do not fix the surface attention at the first page and keep it alertly alive thereafter. Some literary skill and some consistency in the author's conception is necessary for readability, but there need be no implicit reference to fundamental ideas, nothing that is universal in its application, and therefore the interest of such books is usually transient. They often become less readable in even two years' time, because readability depends to some extent on fashions in outlook and diction. But the quality is not common ; hundreds of novels appear which have neither aesthetic merit, which we will call vitamin U, nor readability, which we will call vitamin R; and so it becomes the concern of the reviewer to note when vitamin R is present in slight or high degree in the novels of the week.
Judged by this standard, Mr. Tracy must come first on the list. How Sleeps theBeast is one of those books you can't put down. Its subject is the lynching of a negro by farmers and fishermen in eastern Maryland, who deliberately incite themselves to mass sadism ; and so horrible is the climax that no one to whom the contemplation of cruelty brings bad dreams should read it. This is not because Mr. Tracy gloats, nor even because indignation gives a too personal. tone to his narrative. In an earlier book, Round Trip, his feeling for married happiness was squeezed through his " tough " convention in sentimental drops ; but the present book is an advance on its predecessor in this respect ; he succeeds in being merely the detached, vivid reporter of events. The character-sketches are objective, except for one attempt at interpretation, which is the weakest part of the book. An educated young man, Al, has known the imprisoned negro from childhood, and wants to succour him from the enraged multitude, or at least wants to dissociate himself openly from the lynching, and he miserably fails; and this incident, more Carefully and fully treated than most, is noticeably less effective than the briefer one where a farmer is persuaded by his wife, against his will, to join the lynchers. Mr. Tracy is not competent to delve into the hearts of humans : to describe their actions in times of .stress he is well fitted. His book contains a great deal of vitamin R.
Mr. McCoy belongs to the same school of novel-writers. His earlier work, They Shoot Horses, Don't They had the fascinating subject of a Dance Marathon. No Pockets in a Shroud is about a young reporter who starts a weekly magazine in order to expose the corruption to which his ex-employer, editor of a daily paper, affords the protection of silence. He attacks the rich and powerful, notably the latest version of Ku Klux Klan, and is destroyed in so doing. Unfortunately this hopeful material is not well presented. The incidental improbability of Dolan producing a complete weekly magazine at short notice almost unaided, and continuing to do so for several weeks, while at the same time acting as sleuth, might be forgiven ; but the utter unreality of his personal relations with friends and mistresses is fatal. In novels of this tough, high-speed sort, every word counts, there is no space for retouching and recovery; dialogue and incident must be unerringly selected to make the maximum effect in the shortest possible time. Here the school-girlish ignorant idealism of much of the chatter, combined with the hopping in and out of bed with different people for inconsequent reasons, makes one feel one is reading about a madhouse. In books dealing with violence and lawlessness there must be a substratum of ordinary life whereby to measure the abnormality of crime. Mr. Tracy gives us this substratum, but Mr. McCoy seems to be unaware of what normal life is like. For instance, Dolan's ardent wish for freedom of the Press, justice for all, and integrity in public life, does not prevent him employing gangster methods himself when it suits him ; and it does not even occur to him that in so doing he is supporting the regime he condemns. This woolly-headedness, which must be the author's as well as Dolan's, since he intends his hero to be taken for an intelligent youth, contributes to the general unreality of No Pockets in a Shroud, and robs it of most of its readability.
The Rising Tide belongs to a quite different brand—the leisurely novel of character. As usual with Miss Farrell, the setting is a large country house in Ireland, and hunting plays a part. Garonlea in the early years of the century is dominated by a dragon called Lady Charlotte who has a subservient spouse and four enslaved daughters. An unhappy spirit broods over the house, but it is not made clear whether this dates only from the reign of Lady Charlotte or from earlier times. Diana, the youngest and least docile daughter, feels permanently depressed by it, and when the son of the house brings his English bride on a visit, hard and unperceptive though she is, she feels the depression too. The rest of the book relates Cynthia's long battle with this brooding unhappiness ; she is the most import- ant character in the book and, owing to the acuteness with which she has been observed, and the brilliance with which she is presented, the book is a success. Avid of admiration, naturally expert at exploitation, beautiful, vital, selfish, stupid, and determined, she lives on the opposite side of the river from Garonlea, and holds court for the whole county. Lady Charlotte's conventions are openly flouted, and her authority with her daughters, notably Diana, undermined. Upon the death of Cynthia's husband in the war, Diana goes to live with her ; and here is one place where I quarrel with Miss Farrell. Would an adoring love like Diana's give so much and demand no return ? I don't believe it ; I think Diana would have irritated Cynthia by making occasional scenes—and Cynthia was not a woman to put up with anything that annoyed her for two minutes.
But Miss Farrell's scheme requires Diana to be on the spot when Garonlea itself passes to Cynthia. She is the close friend of Cynthia's two children, whom their mother has always bullied into hunting, although it both bores and terrifies them ; she is the witness of Cynthia's deterioration as she increases her drinking and loses discrimination about her lovers ; she assists the children, now grown-up, in their attempt to jerk Cynthia into a realisation that her age demands a graceful withdrawal from the fierce light of riotous publicity which has beaten on her for twenty years. It is with their attempt to force an abdication that Miss Farrell's firm hold weakens. Simon chooses a time when the house is full of his aunts and their families to give, without Cynthia's agree- ment, a party at which the guests are to wear costumes of the 'nineties and early nineteen hundreds. He replaces the furniture and hangings of Lady Charlotte's time, and, to his sister's dismay, takes on some of his grandmother's tyrannical coldness, and even strikes his aunts as suddenly resembling her. The old unhappy spirit of repression holds sway, the party is a dreary flop, and is only rescued by Cynthia appearing in modern clothes and taking complete charge. It is her final triumph. Simon wins.
This curious climax, and the semi-mystical haunting spirit of unhappiness at Garonlea with which it is connected, is not at all convincing ; it is as though a charade by Noel Coward and an early story by Michael Arlen had got mixed up with a book by Miss Farrell. I think this is because the writer is not clear enough herself about the nature of the brooding spirit, whereas she is perfectly clear, and so sure-handed, where Cynthia's nature, and the nature of Simon's filial hatred are concerned. The chapters in which Cynthia forces the' children to hunt, and those dealing with her relations with David, her first lover, are particularly good. Miss Farrell's style is sometimes incoherent from too many inversions and suppressions of the verb, and it suffers from some affectations such as the frequent use of " entirely " ; but vitamin R is present throughout, helped by a descriptive talent which is never allowed its head for more than a few sentences at a time. Vitamin U is there too : not in the book as a whole, but in the character of Cynthia. The remarks attributed to her (as that, when she had lost control of an amorous situation, "the whole thing was too difficult ") are masterly. The conquering blonde, so familiar in real life, has been perfectly done in fiction once for. all. The hard sensual type is Miss Farrell's forte ; she is least good when attempting more imaginative effects.
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