Fiction
Equinox. By Allan Seager. (Heinemann. 10s. 6d.)
CHAOS—a state of chaos makes the common background for each of these three long novels. Allan Seager, the gifted young American writer, who has gained a reputation in Europe as well as in his native country for his short stories, sets his theme in New York during the nightmare period when the war was " bogus ": C. S. Lewis advances into the vague future and employs a vague locality for his upheaval: Jack Lindsay takes us back firmly for the sack of Rome. Each of these books might be called a fable, for each points a moral, but actual similarity ends with this comparison. The characters in Equinox are not mere types, which is sufficient justification for placing this book at the head of the list, but not less important is a subtle quality which lifts a work out of the general welter of fiction into a rank apart ; the quality may be defined by the use of the word formal, which means simply that the author's work is consciously influenced by the tradition and art of the novel. The central figure of Equinox is a smart, rather worldly, journalist, who, realising the carnage in store for Europe, turns his back on her with horror. Waiting for him in America is his young daughter whom he has not seen since she was a child of ten. He intends taking her away from the convent boarding- school and freeing her from the influence of her maternal grand- mother. Unwilling to assume responsibility, he delays doing this, and eventually Mary runs away from school and joins him in New York. The self-centred Richard Miles has meanwhile proposed to his ex-mistress and been refused ; she is a promiscuous and sophistiCated creature who, while anxious to renew the liaison, has no illusions about Miles and few about herself. When she finds he has finally abandoned her to make a home for his daughter she is furious. To be revenged, she suggests to Miles that his daughter's feelings for him are incestuous. This idea has already been made to him by a casual male acquaintance, who, meeting father and daughter at a night club, takes them for lovers. The second attack does its terrible havoc. Miles gets frantic and even- tually seeks the aid of a corrupt and wealthy psychiatrist, who has become the husband of his ex-mistress. This man, Henry Ver- planck, ruthless and dangerous, in pursuit of research, undertakes the task with ghoulish zest. The damage done, Mary, still a mere child of seventeen, tries to escape by making a hasty marriage with a youngster whom she has met casually at an art school. Miles rejoices, but the abnormal Verplanck quickly persuades him to intervene, so that the union is unconsummated, and the girl returns to her father's roof. Mary is the least successfully imagined of Seager's characters, she is drawn on too slight a scale perhaps for her fate.
Having heard so much about the earlier excursions of C. S. Lewis into fiction, it is rather disconcerting to find the structure of That Hideous Strength on the clumsy side. The tale he tells is of the struggle between the forces of good and evil, and will be en- joyed by the admirers of the novels of the late Charles Williams, for here again magic of the black and white kinds are actively employed with equal learning—if with less skill and subtlety than that of the author of All Hallowes Eve. C. S. Lewis bothers little about the variations in character, his people are much too sheep- like whatever their colour ; his rather more elaborately contrived heroine develops into a nice woman with nasty ideas, especially about domestic servants. The theme for all its importance to the author (does he not sub-title it A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown- 74 ups?) is cluttered up and enfeebled by too many tame details and an over-boyish exuberance: all those varied but sanguinary killings at the climax are much too reminiscent of the twopence coloured dreadfuls. And surely the very attributes of scientists, which make for the common distrust of their activities, are riot made very credible in the mythical gang of Merlin kidnappers gathered to- gether for this further exploiting of Dr. Ransbme's supernatural adventures.
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The Barriers Are Down is also concerned with a clashing struggle for power, this time against the background of history. Jack Lindsay makes his characters serve as ideas, but for all their discussions, his young men remain types who fail to rouse the reader's interest, they begin dully and dullness pursues them faith- fully through the epoch in which they are presented to us, though their adventures are varied and violent enough. Paulinus, son of a wealthy father, seeks religion and embraces poverty ; Prosper, swindled out of inheritance, pursues ambition madly, but with little success ; while Audax takes to communal life with the Bagaudae with priggish fervour. Robert Graves has demonstrated that the historical novel can be serious without being dreary, but then he never allows period to swamp personality.
PI JOHN HAMPSON.
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