FICTION

By KATE O'BRIEN

Y of which demanded ''straight and unaffected narration through who chars for Petersen, and whose son Limey (bastard b Agnes's dead husband) is the village lunatic—made from the neutral instriunenr of-the author, if.:ii this, of the illuminated mere threatening " simpleness " into a dreadful kind of sensualist, woman, the ufteasy rationaliier, man, and the, if you maniac by a birching appointed from the magistrate's bench. like, ultra-gifted superinan, platbnist, ascetic,-„•'Carthsian. There is Mr. Pyecroft, the eccentric parson,: beautifully and But Carthusian with a- difference:- Dom Phi* Sept-Joni, sympathetically done, as that stock character of the English ex-Harley Street specialist of some kind, and now Prior of countryside seldom is. The story, woven out of. these and : La Cartuja, Utiel, is not in fact a trice son' Of gaint Bruno. others,- and • founded deeply in the normalities of humour, • irony, love and the will to be happy, is, as it must be, pro- foundly distressing: But though its author's understanding never flinches, so also does her mercy never fail. And as a measure of her power I commend to careful readers the scene of storm in which Petersen, half-loving Mary, half-loving Agnes and deeply pitiful of her, becomes the mad girl's lover.

The light on madness, and its light on normality, which this book flings, are brilliant. Agnes, like Ophelia, turns it all "to favour and to prettiness," but painfully, with a shocking vividness in her grace. And against her exposition we have Limey's, the poor village boy—and the awful scene in which, over the innocence of childhood and the pitiful terror of a little dog, the two contrasted madnesses meet in horror, and meet their dooms.

I could go on. The sanity that rides this storm, the irony, the love, the sense of patience—all these are major things. The piteousness of the household as Agnes dies, the honour and stiffness of Mary's love for Petersen. But space is limited. I do not imagine that everyone will read this book—but those who cannot are missing an experience of some price.

Nightingale Wood, on the other hand, is everyone's story— a fact which makes me want to argue with Miss Gibbons. Because, until I was more than halfway through, I did not see her very cunning, but not quite justifiable, game. Miss Gibbons is a writer with an unmerciful sense of the absurdity of human beings—and here, too, on the edge of the nightingale wood in Essex, it seemed, very entertainingly, that we were no better than usual. Nor are we. Miss Gibbons' calm mockery flies right and left. The family at The Eagles are ridiculous, if pathetic ; so are the grandees at Grassmere ; so, indeed, is everyone around and about Chesterbourne. Good. There are few so blind as to be unable to see the point of wholesale, hearty contempt. But—how does Miss Gibbons explain her arrogant dissociation of plot from character ? She takes a handful of deliciously differentiated idiots, as it might be you

Between Sleeping and Waking. By Dorothy Charques. (Peter and me, and the lovely girl next door, and she proceeds, . . _

Davies. 7s. 6d.) having made every possible kind of fool of us, to write a fairy Nightingate Wool. By Stella Gibbons. (Longmans. 8s. 6d.) tale in which all our dreams—but all our dreams—come true ! Bird Under Glass. By Ronald Fraser. (Cape: - 7s.-6d.)- It is preposterous, this book—but it is really great fun, even Oh Say, Can You See! By Lewis Browne.. (Cape. 8s..6d.);

when, as in the last chapter, the reader feels that he is having Minimum Man. By Andrew Marvell. (Gollancz. 8s. 6d.)

his leg pulled most impertinently. It deserves general FIVE times out of five to be genuinely interested and feel a bona reading and. will get it. But I dissociate 'myself indignantly fide desire to read a book to the end—reviewers of fiction will. from Miss Gibbons' scandalous cheating. By .all means, in bear witness that that is a surprising state of affairs _in our any galere whatever, let Cinderella have her prince. And, routine. And if once in five such lucky encounters one is ' hardened indeed is the, highbrow who could grudge her silly, moved and deeply touched, why then ' the cup is 'full, and - dumb Victor to this lovely, weeping, adoring, silly Viola.

graciousness an obligation. - - - - . Miss Gibbons knows all about sex appeal, and that beautiful, . ..

Between Sleeping and Waking is by . Dorothy Charques _ simple, willowy . young blondesare made that way so as

. .

and appears to be her second novel. ' The first; The Tramp to. get their own *ay. .But—for the rest . of the victims of and His Woman, I have not yet read, but I shall do so. I wish " the nightingaledo dusty little- thirty-five-year-olds, with I had space to examine all the facets of talent revealed in the books on sex-psychology- concealed -ufistairs, really get away book now to be considered. But first it must be said that _ into permanent. happiness with beautiful _twenty-three-year-old it is not everyone's book. Although it contains many normal . chauffeUrs, and do these chauffeurs fall into immense, fortuitous characters, presented with humour and grace, and although fortunes, and have their natures, changed by kissing Miss it recreates the English rural scene with a poetic ease and Thirty-Five? ..In.short, is ,everything for the best in the most a fine dismissal of affectation, its major "design is the cxamina- absurd of all worlds.? . Well:A& our shameless author tion of madness in two contrasted forms, and the reactions answer. :Anyhow, her jokes are fearless, and her fairy tale by of this on surrounding sensibilities. An ambitiOus, tricky its very impudence gladdens the incredulous heart.

purpose—but here strikingly ' successful. There are three - Mr. Ronald Fraser is a writer whose power and distinction sisters, living with their widowed mother on the edge of a have earned him the right to approach his themes as his impulse stream-washed village. One of them, Agnes, had become may decide; but 'for My part I feel very strongly that the sadly and prettily half-mad when she heard the news of her beautiful conception of Bird Under Glass is spoilt by an unfortu- husband's violent death in Africa. (" My mind slips in and nate ingenuity of technique. 'To have confided the narrative out of madness, like a shadow under a closed door.")- There of the delicate .spiritual adventures of three strongly differen- is Eric Petersen, who turns up with his Pekinese slog, and tiated human creatures to any one of the three would already rents the Mill Cottage from this family. There is Lucy, be to court danger, but to place the whole thing in the hands Agnes's dear little stolid daughter, who falls in love with the of the Woman, "moody. ; exhibitionist Marisol, was quite simply Pekinese. There is the Rat-catcher, there is Mrs. Rogers to spoil it. Ifs ever, there was a story the delicacy and value Y of which demanded ''straight and unaffected narration through who chars for Petersen, and whose son Limey (bastard b Agnes's dead husband) is the village lunatic—made from the neutral instriunenr of-the author, if.:ii this, of the illuminated mere threatening " simpleness " into a dreadful kind of sensualist, woman, the ufteasy rationaliier, man, and the, if you maniac by a birching appointed from the magistrate's bench. like, ultra-gifted superinan, platbnist, ascetic,-„•'Carthsian. There is Mr. Pyecroft, the eccentric parson,: beautifully and But Carthusian with a- difference:- Dom Phi* Sept-Joni, sympathetically done, as that stock character of the English ex-Harley Street specialist of some kind, and now Prior of countryside seldom is. The story, woven out of. these and : La Cartuja, Utiel, is not in fact a trice son' Of gaint Bruno. others,- and • founded deeply in the normalities of humour, • irony, love and the will to be happy, is, as it must be, pro- foundly distressing: But though its author's understanding never flinches, so also does her mercy never fail. And as a measure of her power I commend to careful readers the scene of storm in which Petersen, half-loving Mary, half-loving Agnes and deeply pitiful of her, becomes the mad girl's lover. He should have been some individualistic kind. 'of hermit. Though there is no reason why his service to the soiiid, of Marisol and Stony could not have been rendered within the rule and faith of the order that sheltered him. However, this is without question an interesting and well-written book. Pre-occupation with the spirit and with man's sense of his before and after is much to be welcomed, and here we have these things presented to us by a grave and careful artist.

Oh Say, Can You See! is excellent entertainment, and you are hard to please if you do not enjoy it. It is about a very young Russian, Ivan Krassnaumov, who arrives in California in 1936 to take up a fellowship at the Boggs Marine Biological Station. He is a dear, good bay and in his devotion to the ideology and practices of the Union of Soviet Republics as inno- cently convinced and charmingly smug as a newly instructed missionary from any nineteenth-century Baptist or Wesleyan college. The fun of the book is in the repercussions on him of modern American life and ideology—his first shocks, his innocent, charming delights, his temptation to question the sacred materialism of the U.S.S.R., his wondering, his absurd and wild falling in love with a shocking young cat of a mil- lionairess, the muddle he gets into with the authorities because of the love-muddle of his friend Gus, the taxi-driver, and his final delighted departure for Russia and the warm orbit of his true faith. The story is deliciously quick, ironic and informed.

Minimum Man surprised me by not being at an boring. I cannot bear novels placed in the future—and this is dated 1950. But the author mercifully does not try to be Wellsian. He does not invent an absurdly mechanised, unfamiliar scene. What he does invent, to alarm a Fascist-ridden England, is a tribe of horrid little men and women, all geniuses, all by nature humourless little Communists, all one foot high and all covered with golden hair. The story of their asexual genesis does not dispose the reader in their favour, but their advent makes an exciting tale nevertheless—which let Mr. Marvell-- well-named.to do it—tell in his own agreeable manner.