Fiction
THIS, like many recent ones, is a badclish week in fiction. IndA were it not for Mr. Storm's bright, promising talent which does not yet work hard enough and for a few embarrassed 13 which the author of Delilah Upside Down did not intend BS have, I would be gravelled for comment, good or bad, upon books listed above.
Mr. Storm has, however, produced a piece of fiction w can be safely commended for unpretentious entertainment I have not read his first novel, Pity the Tyrant, which seem- have received much praise, but there is no doubt that he :5 young man equipped to go much farther in novel-writing he has allowed this second agreeable effort to take him. He many gifts ; attack, simplicity, a feeling for narrative shape. a very agreeable detachment and humour in characterisation : his writing is journalistic and lazy, and he somehow give' impression that he finds novel-writing a "cinch." To be as as he could be he will have to drop that illusion and learn 1'6' for the medium he has chosen, but it is almost certain 631 the routine of work he will do so. He will learn, very
that seriousness wears better than facility and that neatness is not the same thing as restraint ; he will learn to suspect first thoughts and that a flash in the pan gives off very little heat. In doing so he may have to be hard on his present attractive asset of young scepticism and his deceptive idea that to forgive all is the equivalent of knowing all—idiosyncrasies which make him beguiling to read, since they are put over simply and with good manners, but which may retard his progress towards the writing of memorable books. Meantime let us be gracious and give thanks in these dull days for a piece of well-timed and deft entertainment. This story of three critical days on board an old tub of a cargo-boat-turned-pleasure-cruiser is a generous and lucky mixture of particular misadventure at sea and more general kinds of personal, pathetic comedy.
Troubled Waters may be found worth reading by some for its accurate reporting of deep-sea fishing for cod off the coast of Iceland. To an ignoramus this seemed convincingly done, and the straightforward writing-up of Icelandic scenery has about the same value as, say, a Fitzpatrick travel film. But the father-son- and-unfaithful-mother theme is messily handled, too violent and obvious, and the book as a whole must be dismissed as dull.
Adventures of Gilead Skaggs is a naive tale of cattle-rustling. It is designed, one supposes, to meet that old reviewer's tag about boys of all ages, "from eight to eighty." It is a perfectly simple book, without literary merit, and I should say unreadable by any grown-up.
Mr. Bruce Marshall's new novel defeats comment. It has a nonsensical plot, slung round a few British officers billeted in a very odd château in Northern France during the dreary winter of 5939-40. Its characterisations are inane, I think, rather than insane ; and its decor, of poetic quotation, philosophic allusion, Catholic liturgy and what I regretfully suppose Mr. Marshall might call " bawdry," makes up a whole of pretentiousness and blush-producing ineptitude which defeats description. As for the heroine ! Well, perhaps if she had been upside-downed on every day of what must have been a horrible, show-off childhood, and soundly thrashed, we would have been spared a very em- barrassing conception of brilliant maidenhood—but really she is =discussable. The book might possibly be enjoyed as a very private joke among close friends who may get a laugh out of test- ing each other's blushes and winces. KATE O'BRIEN.
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