Fiction
Fact, Fun and Fancy
(Bodley Head. 7s. 6d.)
" FrcTION " becomes an increasingly elastic term. In any case, the reviewing of it under the heading of " fact " would, perhaps, be a pardonable Irishism when applied to a novel like The Wasted Island. Mr. O'Duffy at his best achieVes that sublimation of fact into truth which is the artist's business ; but sometimes his facts remain mere facts, and, as such, become obtrusive. In over five hundred pages he presents a picture of Irish history from the time of the Boer War to that of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Bernard Laseelles; the central figure, is the son of a-fashionable Dublin physician, who is a fanatical Protestant and Unionist, and who; while holding in scorn his wife's belief in the Pope, has no doubt about his own infallibility. Nevertheless, Dr. Lascelles is under a pledge to train his boy as a Catholic, and Bernard is therefore sent to Ashbury, the English Public School, where " the Catholicism of English squires -Is• taught. Later, at the new Nationalist University in Dublin, he encounters the very different " Catholicism of European democracy." Yet none of the varied influences under which he comes can vie with that exercised by his adored uncle Christopher, the hero of his childhood. Christopher; a passionate Republican, dies fighting for the Boers, arid, inspired by his memory as well as 'by letters from the deid man which are given to him on his twenty-first birthdak, Bernard throws himself ardently into the Republican mime, and the story moves on, through phase after phase of the pre-War and early-War years in- Ireland, to the final catastrophe.
The development—physieal, mental and spiritual-of several of Bernard's friends is followed almost as intimately as that of Bernard himself. The book abounds in good objective portraiture, in sound, natural dialogue, and in an immense variety of vividly drawn scenes, Irish and English. And yet, somehow,. the story fails to move so well as it should through its characters, which become somewhat obscured in the profusion of detail. Mr. O'Duffy has choSen his title wisely ; for Ireland herself—the wasted island— is the true heroine of his pages. He himself, of course, takes the Republican side, and upholds it with passionate conviction. Yet he writes with restraint and without undue bitterness, and his book, however it be regarded as a novel, supplies a picture of recent Irish life which future historians should with advantage consult.
Mr. Whitaker is a new short-story writer in the now popular vein of Mr. A. E. Coppard. Or it would be truer to say that he is an impressionist who fails only when he attempts to be a story writer. As an impressionist he gives us realism in the true, and not merely the modern, sense. His characters are mostly poor people in an industrial town and the neighbouring countryside, and, so long as he strives after nothing more exciting, his brief glimpses into their-lives display both insight and artistry. When, however, he is moved to devise some sort of plot, he -needlessly ruins his effects. His clever little study of a group of excursionists returning from a day's outing is, for example, rendered .merely_irritating by the sudden disaster which overtakes, the train. As a portrayer of human nature Mr. Whitaker promises to have considerable gifts. He can afford to leave murder and sudden death to-the specialists in-that-line. Mrs. Francis 13rown is a great-grand-nieee of Jane Austen, and she has obviously enjoyed the quiet fun of describing 'the later fortunes of one of her illustrious ancestor's minor characters. Margaret Dashwood, now twenty-one, is living alone with her mother at Barton Cottage, near Exeter. Various " polite suitors, including the obnoxiously com- placent and persistent young Vicar, compete for her favour, and Margaret has to battle against every kind of interference : before she takes the law into her own hands and elopes with the impecunious naval officer to whom her heart is pledged.
• The attempt to carry on the work of the great is so rarely " successful that we approached this book with misgiving. But a portion of " Jane's " mantle certainly seems to have fallen upon Mrs. Brown, who has captured the authentic atmosphere to a remarkable degree.
We have often found Mr. Leacock's humour too broad for our liking. It is with the greater pleasure, therefore, that we express enthusiasm for his latest volume, with its fifty odd glimpses into futurity, in which we see present tendencies —in science, invention, social life, literature, journalism, sport, and so on—carried to their logical extremes. The iron man and the tin woman of the title are robots so mechanically perfected that they can perform for their human representatives the painful business of becoming engaged and going through the marriage service in church— leaving, of course, to their human representatives themselves the joy of the honeymoon. Another story full of delicious sting is that which describes a party of American sightseers " doing " the world in a day in an aerial charabanc of 1950. The whole book is the more delightfully funny because its satire is of the best kind that conveys an implicitly serious criticism of life.
The Way of Ecben, the work of another famous American writer, will not be to everybody's taste, but will appeal to readers who enjoy fantasy shot through with allegorical significance and inspired by a spiritual ideal. The story is that of a mythical king who renounces everything, including the most beautiful woman in the world, to follow a dream. Mr. Cabell once again shows exquisite skill in word painting, and satire redeems his idealism from sentimentality. He is still so fresh and spontaneous, in spite of his fifty years, that we hope he will reconsider his decision—expressed in some appended essays—to write no more. May the Dream, which he says our young people have temporarily lost, con- tinue to lure him on !
GILBERT THOMAS.
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