NEW NOVELS
Potomac blues
GEORGE CLIVE
Washington. D.C. Gore Vidal (Heinemann 30s) The Practice Stanley Winchester (W. H. Allen 30s) The Butt of .Malmsey Hugh Ross Williamson (Michael Joseph 30s) The Bride of Battersea J. A. Cuddon (Hodder and Stoughton 30s) Blame It on My Youth Benny Green (Mac- Gibbon and Kee 30s) The Itinerant William Herrick (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 25s) The theme of Gore Vidal's new novel, Washington D.C., is the corruption of Ameri- can political life between 1937 and 1952: the corruption is progressive, and the pace so rapid that the mind reels at the depths that may have been reached by 1967. The main action of the book concerns the progress of Clay Overbury, at first the assistant of a right-wing Democrat, Senator Burden Day, finally the occupier of his old employer's seat in the Senate. The flawed liberalism of the old senator gives place to the perfected opportunism of the new, whose lack of policy is masked by astute public relations.
It would be easy to dismiss this as just another novel of American politics, the juicy steaks of intrigue and sex topped up in the case of Mr Vidal's work by a slice of classical culture like a slice of pâté. It would also be unfair; all the major characters, with the pos- sible, unfortunate exception of Clay Overbury, are fully rounded and their actions and reflec- tions are consistently interesting. Political novels generally suffer from the burden of great events imposed on characters too Weak to carry
them; in this novel the characters are concerned almost wholly with their own rather than the national interest, so this difficulty is avoided. Washington, D.C. has its share of flaws; in places it is affected or tedious or obvious, but its subtleties of scene and characterisation make it a rewarding book.
The Practice, by Stanley Winchester, is another novel about corruption, this time in an English south coast town. The town is called Plume, which suggests a debt to Dornford Yates not otherwise apparent in the text. The blurb compares Plume to Peyton Place, but readers may be relieved to find that the out- wardly respectable inhabitants of the south coast do at least refrain from rape and incest. The book is very competently written indeed; a young doctor from London joins the practice of the title, and it is chiefly through his eyes that ire see the sexual and social life of the town. This doctor becomes engaged to a terrible local beauty; but in the end he returns to London and the girl he really loves.
Meanwhile the practice has been threatened by the drunkenness of one partner and the homosexuality of another. Expertly the senior doctor covers up for the first and jettisons the second, arkti Plume returns to its normal state. This is a tine example of the lid-off-a-small- town genre: although Mr Winchester lacks the compelling gusto of, say, John Braine, in delineating status, the snobbery of the town is very well conveyed. The young doctor is rather too shadowy a character, but the pas- sages of sexual description at any rate are splendidly graphic.
The Butt of Malmsey, by Hugh Ross Wil- liamson, is the life story of the Duke of Clarence, who, Mr Ross Williamson thinks, has been as churlishly treated by historians as he was by his brother. The book covers the Wars of the Roses till the death of Clarence, and is of necessity extremely didactic: the first two thirds of the book is given tip to a detailed and admirably lucid account of the wars, when Clarence was of too tender an age to play much part in the story. The narration is marred by an over-fondness for historical cliche: it was magnificent but it was not war' (the Battle of Wakefield). 'She had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing' (Margaret of Anjou). When Clarence begins to play a major part in the story, Mr Ross Williamson endows bin, with the straightforward amiability that has served as character for the heroes of innumerable his- torical novels. However, this seems to conflict with the events of the last few years of Clarence's life as recounted here; it is difficult not to think that he was either more of a self- seeker or more of a fool than Mr Ross Wil- liamson allows.
J. A. Cuddon's The Bride of Battersea is set in a large, famous, boxer's pub; here the pub's owner brings his new Italian wife, who falls in love with her stepson, a rising heavy- weight. Phaedra in South London, complete with a chorus of chars; although in this case Hippolytus's failings are brutal rather than priggish, a change that removes some of the force of the classical situation. When the boxer's father sets a gang of thugs on him, and he is killed, the reader's emotions are not in- volved. 'Lena, the bride of the title, is well drawn, but not well enough to make up for the lack of depth in the other characters. The scenes in the pub and in the ring are very con- vincingly described.
Benny Green's first novel, Blame It on My Youth, consists of an elaborate regression into the past. Its narrator is reminded, first of one,
then of several people he knew in his youth. during and after the Second World War. He is forced to re-examine his relationships with them, and he realises how little he had under- stood them. It is an interesting idea, and some of the scenes are very funny indeed: but the book does not develop its theme sufficiently. The aeroplane rolls along the runway, but does not take off. The book's wrapper is very ingenious.
Finally, William Herrick's The Itinerant de- scribes in prose that ranges from the deter- minedly hip to the romantic-realist the life of Zeke Gurevitch, through the American de- pression and the Spanish civil war up to the present day. This short book is a victim of its own rapidity. The reader feels as though he was being driven very fast in a car; objects of interest appear and arc too quickly lost over the rear horizon. There arc enjosahle episodes in this novel, but they arc all too brief.
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