Fiction

By WILLIAM PLOMER Holy Ireland. : By Norali Hoult. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.)

Holy Ireland I take to be the ^most remarkable, novel. Miss Norah HOult has yet 'written: The title is ironical, and the fact that she has chosen to focus attention on the priest-

hood by means of a mild amorous lapse on the part of one of its members will not be acceptable , to all her readers, but there seems little doubt that she has produced a faithful and skilful account of the life of a middle-class family in Dublin at the end of the last century. The pattern of the life of these O'Neills is, not an altogether novel one. The

tyrannical father, the amiable, scurrying, distracted mother, the loving but 'rebellious daughter, the sympathetic maid- servant, the son with relaxing principles and an increasing thirst--all these are something like stock characters in tales of strict Victorian households. But Miss Hoult has ;dressed them anew in the colours of a special place and time. Patrick O'Neill, successful cattle jobber, is a " queer strict mau," a dictator on the lieurthrug and a bigot and extreme puritan in his religion. 4` I often wonder to myself," says • his wife, " whether there won't be a special shortening of the time in Purgatory for some women. For, God-knows, there's many seem to get a good dose ofyurgatory in this life, God help them." When their. daughter Margaret engages herSelf to a young Englishman of Piptestant origins, a vegetarian and theosophist, a reader of:Darwin and John Stuart Mill, it may well be imagined what, effect this has on hei papa. The breach betWeen Margaret and her father, who belieVes that by marrying at a registry office ehe has ". damned her soul to all eternity,"

is the most significant thing in the -book, which .I recommend as a straightforward, compassirinate; true-to-life naturalistic

novel, sound in craftsnianship, never dull or false, and showing a very nice insight into. the ,period, .the love-letters from a young man in Chapter 10 being a particular triumph. But I recommend it with certain misgivings, having in mind at the moment a remark which occurs in one of the letters of Main Fournier, to the effect that " the prinCiple of the realists seems to be that one must try to see as Everyman sees; in the belief that what all the world can see is the only reality." Now Holy Ireland is in lus, sense the 'work of an

innovator, and a true artist is always an innovator. For all Miss Hoult's specialised knowledge,. her sincerity and talent, this book is academic,- and might:have been written twenty

or thirty years ago, before the shadow of Ulysses was cast over Dublin. She has made no effort to escape from that tradition

of realism or naturalism which no longer easily satisfies those with advanced tastes in fiction.• And what of the other three writers on my list ? Have

they been more, successful in breaking new ground . The author of Out for a Million has some 'original matter to present, but in manner he owes much to the example of Gogol. This is the third Russian novel I have had the pleasure of noticing lately in these columns. It is a:cheerful satire on the crooked- nets of high finance in Russia before the War and affords sortie insight into the rich merchant class belonging to the sect known as the Old Believers. Arseny Aristarkhov was a young student troubled by want of money. He could not keep up with his rich friends, his mistress was unfaithful to him, and he accordingly determined to get rich, to go " out for a million." As soon as we have gathered this, we are treated to an admirably fresh

and' 'vivid inset of Arseny's childhood told in the first person, and reading More like autobiography than fiction.

His- home life was not unlike that Of-Miss Hoult's Margaret O'Neill : " Religious squabbles. missionaries, priests and lay readers filled my childhood. All our life '0 .home` was saturated -with

religion---a hard, mournful religion, lased on Fear, , People spoke of the fear of God at school; in chureh; honie, evcrywhOre."

In order to get a fortune Arseny attached himself to his uncle Sidor, a building contractor to the government, whose crooked- ness and astuteness were dissembled by the manners and speech of an illiterate comedian.

" In those unpunctuated phrases, broken, staccato, unfinished.,

• confused and running into each other, was wisdom and a profound knowledge of life, and they smelt of millions."

The translator must be- congratulated on his share in" making this individual imaginable to an English reader. There is: . another relation much-in the foreground. Grishka, an uncouth; young parvenu who is something of a satyr. For him a wife: has -to be found, and Arseny, being more worldly-wise, accom-1 panics him in the search. This double quest—to find a wife for 'Grishka and a million for himself—enables Arseny to, travel about as freely as the hero of Dead Souls and gives the author plenty of scope for scene-shifting. A brief quot t

part of an account of an evening on a boat on the Volga, will give a hint of Krymov's lively humour :

" There was also an Mithoress, a young-looking woman willi, a hoarse voice arid an enormous bust. She made friends everybody, kept running from ono to another, from the first-class to the second, talking incessa ` You must Combine, gentlemen.: Man is a social animal. Mau is strong in combination. po not' bo like trees, gentlemen. Silence the mark Of death ; man has the privilege of speech.' She draggcd the landowner's daughters` about and introduced thein to,everybody. They blushed erimson bobbed curtsies, and danced as though packed with raw eggs.,! ' Come now, gentlemen, wipe out dais distinctions I Break down the barriers ' "

Later volumes, continuing the life-story of Arseny, have been: published and praised ,in responsible quarters, and it is to be hoped that they will also be translated, especially as the action is laid " in St. Petersburg before and during the War and at the beginning ofthe tievolutiiin, 'and then in various;. parts of the world,. including England."

It is time Messrs. Heinemann granted a long, long holiday to their gushing blurb-writer, whose fond Incubi:Aims are calculated to put any intelligent reader off even opening the novels of Mr. Steinbeck and MiSs Juta. Tortilla Flat suggests that the brutal and laconic tone of so much con- temporary American fiction- may be only an inversion of an inordinate sentimentality. Writing of a pack of vagabond paisanos, people of mixed, blood inhabiting a suburb of Monterey, • idle; drunken, dishonest and promiecnons, Mr. Steinbeek lays himielf (hit' to Make' them -appear wholly humorous and lovable. He exploits with ingenuity and talent the sentimental appeal of vagabondage, companion- ship in poverty drink, simple-mindedness, crime altruistically committed, dogs, and funerals. His brand of humour, stir- prisingly broa I in one small instance, is mostly that' Of the comic strip—wriggling one.' -toes. 'to :keep the flies off them, stealing from people who arc asleep, hunting for non-existent , treasure, snoring, and so on—and has resulted'in a fairy-tale

• for grown-ups. The book may make a wet afternoon w otter for its readers, as their " droppings of warm tears " alternate with sly chuckles at the winsome knaveriee,of these gangsters or groupsters, Danny, Pilon, Pablo, the Pirate, and Big Joe, to say nothing of the ladies.

Miss Juta started out with a good intention. This was to make an example of an awful young man, Anglo-French, a cad, sponge, scrounger, professional diner-out and bungling opportunist, hanging on by the skin of his teeth to the out- skirts of a base 'but well-to-do world.' and fastening like a parasite upon any woman foolish enough to lend herself for the purpose.

" It was a freemasonry. . . . As long as no one took anything or anyone too seriously -(except their love affairs and their scandals), ' as long as no one really did anything too well or knew anything too much, as long as,no one -was too intransigent or had too much integrity or an over-deyeleped lenso of values or conscience or sentiment, all was and would be even ; the set could and would and should help, prateet, and eVen claim its rievOteeS. Its per- quisites were free advertisement, free entertainment, free love, free beds.and jobs found, and one was -passed on with one's little offerings of talent, or chat, or good story, or whatever label could be attached.','. , A depressing theme, it might have been given life by Miss Boyle or Miss Butts. But Miss Juta's is an unpractised hand, her people do not speak, bat " growl," " snap " or " gloom " to one another, her wisecracks misfire, and her cultural allusions are dampened by mis:-spellings.