Fiction
Nailcruncher. By Albert Cohen. (Routledge. 9s.) Landfall. By Nevil Shute. (Heinemann. 8s.)
IF, as Mr. Herbert Read suggests, we are to have a competition for the World's Greatest Novelist, I would put in a plea for M. Romains. Recognising as one did the master of form in Moft de Quelqu'un, and the investigator into the subleties of the sensuous soul in the Lucienne trilogy, it was with some alarm that we read the preface to this astonishing work (of which this volume forms Books XVII and XVIII), in which he told us he had decided not to confine life, select and stylise, after the manner of all previous novelists, himself included. But if it is impossible to grasp the form of this contemporary history, the result, which is life abundantly given, justifies the daring departure. It is a Comedie Humaine, not shut off into compartments, but whole and organic, while M. Romains is a more humane and less sentimental Balzac. Even in its incomplete form, the effect is staggering. This volume, it is true, seems unbalanced: there is too much of the sinister Quinette and the repulsive maniacal Vorge : Jallez's journal is perhaps too lengthy a monologue: but the part must be related to the whole, and this volume prompts one to look up earlier ones.
Here we are concerned with the immediate results of the war, at the same time the frantic attempts to gain still more thrilling sensation in a demoralised world—the diabolic principle —and the flowering of the passionate idealism which has come to such a bitter stage in its eternal journey. -Jallez offsets Quinette, Jerphanion cancels Vorge: Sampeyre reappears for a brief moment, and we meet Mionnet in a bishopric. But the importance of the book lies in the fact that the men of good will are adult ; they are pitifully groping but reassuringly ex- perienced. We can think and feel with them, and at this moment they offer themselves to us as an earnest of the permanence of the real being of France. This work, with the philosophic thread running unobtrusively through it, is more than a mere picture of society; it is a symbol of life.
Miss Johnston's world is also peopled by adults, whose thought attempts to combine and clarify, and who are conscious of history, as every adult must be. The scene is set at the junc- tion of three frontiers, across which are smuggled refugees from —must one call it Germany? Some English people are marooned there by an avalanche, and become involved in the stand the local monastery is making against the forces of evil. It is an exciting story, into which a sense of humour keeps breaking, but the excellence of this well-written book lies in the implications that it carries. These are religious and political, but never unduly forced upon one, so that although it is a book that makes one ponder, it can be enjoyed as a story which never flags.
Those who have read Solal of the Solals will know what to expect of M. Cohen. It cannot be said that the persons are adult; they are those fantastic children, the Gallants of Cephalonia, here whisked off to Geneva. It is a fairy story for grown-up children, and it cannot be read without laughing uproariously. But be- sides the ludicrous element, M. Cohen has a comic idea; in fact, the comic idea par excellence, that of the nimble wit of man cased in a ridiculous and often unlovely carcase. He is not, as the wrapper suggests, a Rabelais, for he lacks both that master's deep criticism and (his chief delight) his exhilarating capacity for word-creation ; he might be called a good-humoured Swift, with some of the exuberance of Rabelais. There are, indeed, torrents of words, the most sublimely ridiculous goings-on, the most grotesquely entertaining thoughts; and through this comic nightmare M. Cohen lets one feel his profound love of Jewry. Fielding's Folly is a book for children which no jeune flue could be allowed to read, Nobody in the book thinks a thought beyond that of a child of fifteen, though bodies behave like those of grown-up animals. The master of the decaying house of Fielding falls a victim to lust-at-first-sight, and marries the girl of marble beauty and a fat bank balance. He is unfaithful to her during their Honolulu honeymoon, recovers from an ill- ness at Singapore, and makes a mess of their lives when they get home. They are simple-minded folk in this book, and some of them are quite pleasant. The story of Mr. Shute's new book, and its characters, is sod as will be rejoiced in by those children of all ages who revel in the most sentimental magazine love-stories: the nice yuun; R.A.F. pilot beautifully marries the barmaid. This is all the more gratifying since she has stood by him through a very difficult time when he was thought to have sunk a British sub- marine. But the book is interesting since it is, I believe, the first war novel of this war, one in which we catch a glimpse of the working of Coastal Command. The detail is not altogether convincing, but the setting is an incitement to read on. An easy and thrilling book for shelter reading, which one may expect to
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