New Novels ,
Swamp Angel. By Ethel Wilson. (Macmillan. 10s. 6d.)
MR. ABSE'S first novel is written from the heart, and many will respond to it. One need not have read his poems to know that_he is a poet; the fact sings from every page. He has, too, a sense of form which keeps this evocation of a Welsh boyhood from being just a series of memories and sense impressions held together by the personality of the teller.
There is no plot. A child grows up in a small and poor community, vulnerable, alert, bewildered, and gradually learns to hold his own against other boys who seem to him so sure of themselves, so much more gifted than he. The writing, lyrical, volatile, delighted, ripples and flashes from picture to picture. Here and there it spills over into exaggeration—`The scent from the honeysuckle was overbearingly delinquent'—but nineteen times out of twenty the waters grace what they have mirrored. ' Eels of lightning twisted through the heaving skies.' A . blackbird ... flew out of the solid apple tree like a heavy black missile from a catapult.' Often, too, there are disturbing shadows, as in this comment on a post-mortem:
Why didn't the corpse cry out in pain? If only the students stopped talking and listened—if there were silence, full, complete{ then perhaps we might hear the very tiny cry of the dead man which would undoubtedly transform us all forever.
The book is rich in vigorous scenes, such as that 'between Uncle Bertie and Mr. Williams at the snooker table and the subsequent fight with Mr. Williams's brother, the return of Jack Aaronowich, the episode of Uncle Bertie and the cat, and Lol's confession about his elocution lessons. Its only uncertainty lies in the handling of certain interpolated episodes from the world outside; for example, the Grynszpan business, and the death of Jimmy Ford in Spain. Their 'purpose is clear, to link the Welsh microcosm with what was happen- ing beyond it, and so pave the way for the moment when those happenings impinge violently on the characters and Keith's dream of being a concert pianist is blasted into darkness; but, involving an abrupt shift of consciousness in what has been to all intents and purposes a first-person-singular narrative, they stick out at awkward angles instead of growing naturally like twigs from a stem.
Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve will inevitably be compared to Mr. William Glynne Jones's Summer Long Ago, published earlier this year, which also recalled a Welsh childhood. Neither will be harmed: each is a delightful addition to the literature of its country.
Love Is a Lonely Thing, another first novel, excels in a different way. Mr. Abse charges gaily across the tightrope and, after a lyrch or two, is carried by his élan to the other side. Mrs. Soman, -coolly holding the balancing-pole of a tried formula, walks with deliberate steps and never for a second looks like slipping. A number of people, meeting at a cocktail party, reveal to us as much as needs be of their present and their past. A girl, to whom our attention is especially called, loves a fifty-year-old novelist, but, before the evening is out, realises that she can love a young man better. A woman of forty sets her cap desperately at a rich oaf; an adolescent girl agonises; the novelist's fears engulf him; his wife finds comfort in the one
role she has always been able to fill. It is all familiar ground, but Mrs. Soman explores it as if no one had ever been there before. Her sense of structure is remarkable. The shifts in time, the dovetailing and the overlapping of the episodes, are most expertly managed, and the characters firmly drawn. In fact, when her first novel is so accomplished, one asks what its author can do next. Mrs. Soman herself supplies the answer. Quite properly, she has limited her curiosity about her characters to the needs of their situation. If, in later novels, she can let her imagination spread around them, she may join the leading novelists of her time.
Swamp Angel is the name of small revolver, and its story is set in
• Canada. When Maggie Vardod decided to leave her second husband, her talent for making trout flies offered a way out. Not till she was well away did she tell her friend Mrs. Severance, the owner of the revolver, what she had done. This practical, almost bald prologue leads to a story with a quality very hard to convey. The telling is smooth, the tone of voice lovi, the language economical; yet from the quiet but powerful opening to the last Excalibur flight of Swamp Angel-the story troubles the mend with overtones and reticences, as if each chapter were a moon with a hidden side more important than the one which Mrs. Wilson shows us.
Sir Compton Mackenzie tells us that he wrote Water On The Brain immediately after his trial under the Official Secrets Act. Its target is the so-called Secret Service, and '... if it does not succeed in being as comic as Intelligence I must plead the impossibility of paint- ing the lily.' To summarise this happy and demented extravaganza would take more space than I am allowed for the whole review. I will say only that those readers who are privileged to know its author personally will hear in it his shouts of laughter and the very tones of his voice, and those who do not know him will feel as if
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