NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24914, 29 June 1946, Page 5

NEW NOVELS

FANTASIA Titus Groan. By Mervyn Peake. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 438 pp. Gormenghast, seat .of the ancient Earldom of Groan and, at the undefined period of Mr Peake’s invention, of Sepulchrave, the seventy-sixth Earl u;. • These names are truthful signals. What a house is this, what an atmosPfi ere , in which Sepulchrave’s valet is Flay, his chief cook Swelter, his doctor Prunesquallor, his librarian Sourdust, nis museum-curator Rottcodd . . where the Lady of Gormenghast sits .surrounded by white cats and funeral birds . . . where the iron-crowned Lord, once, yearly, inspects the carvings brought to him by the grotesques who dwell beyond the battlements, and his daughter Fuchsia is locked with her virgin simplicity in an attic cell . and where the infant Titus, heir to this rich, ceremonious, ruin of a madhouse, is born. The story covers the first year of Titus’s life, which occasions, or with which are loosely connected, most of its ramifying episodes. But there is no story; none, that is, which drives, however erratically, a course from essential beginning to essential close. Mr Peake offers a fantasia which inconsequently unrolls eighteenth century Jiorrors. satirical exercises, immense and strange landscape and interior pictures (Mr Peake is an artist and illustrator), moments of dark dramatic intensity, and some sprawling, antic comedy. Much of this is furnished by the cook, Swelter, whose rich phrasing, winecontorted, takes such shapes as this: “Food,” said Swelter [to his apprentices], “is shelestial and drink is mosht entrancing—such flowers of flatulence. Such, gaseous buds. Come closer in, steal in, and I will shing. I will lift my sweetest heart into the rafters, and will shing to you a shong. An old shong of great shadness, a most dolorous piece. Come closer in.” Among these 1 apprentices is the most sharply defined of Mr Peake’s characters. the boy Steerpike, whose cold, steely, limitless ambition strikes bit-ter-hard across the involutions df Gormenghast. Some will say Yes, enthusiastically, and plunge deep; others, puzzled and repelled. No. There can be no divided feelings about it. BRIGITTE PIAN A Woman of the Pharisees. By Francois Mauriac. Eyre and 'Spottiswoode. 203 pp. ' Mr Gerard Hopkins’s translation of “La Pharisienne,” the latest of Mauri - ac’s novels to be published—it was written during the occupation—is issued as the first volume in a colle’cted edition. To any reader who has sought in vain for the means to explore, in English, the body of work on which Mauriac’s European reputation has been raised this is capital news; and the first volume will confirm his hopes. In Brigitte Pian. the central figure of this work, Mauriac has created one of those characters in which French fiction is extraordinarily rich: a woman whose genius for working harm is inextricable from .her conviction that she works for nothing but good. The height of Mauriac’s triumph is reached in his making this study dynamic, for he advances Brigitte by exquisitely calculated and realised stages to* selfdiscovery and self-conquest. And, perfect (in this dramatic sense) herself, she is perfectly surrounded in place, atmosphere, and person. Beyond question, this is superlatively good work—-eye-opening, stirring, and commanding. NAPOLEONIC The Marriage of Josephine. By Marjorie Coryn. Hodder and Stoughton. 382 pp. Miss Coryn’s portrait of Josephine Beauharnais, who completely turned Napoleon’s head, is drawn with an infinitude of detail, but entire simplicity. She was a careerist, amoral rather than immoral, completely selfcentred, restrained by not the slightest scruple of any- kind, never in the slightest doubt of what she wanted and should have, and therefore never in the slightest doubt that what she did to get it must be right. All that need be said is that, though this certainly over-simplifies Josephine, it makes her a very* diverting heroine indeed. Let historians be steady if they like. RAY The Sun Climbs Slow. By Lou KingHall. Peter Davies. 256 pp. Left a widow after the war of 191418, Olive Eden resolved that her son, Ray, must be educated to hate and refuse war utterly. The problem of educating him in this way was largely a financial one, which she solved—with ironic effect of contrast—by earning enough nfoney as matron in a reactionary prep, school to send Ray to a modern coeducational one. And of course her solution failed, because Ray had too independent a mind and spirit to be bound •by it. Hence Olive’s sad but not uncomforted defeat, when the World War called Ray to answer for himself. - Miss KingHall makes something of the ideas and something of the characters in her novel.

MARIE ARMAND The Lady of the Heather. By Will Lawson. Oswald-Sealy (N.Z.) Ltd. 140 pp. Many New Zealanders have heard the tale—an article in “The Press” recalled ,it, some months ago—of the woman of mystery who lived on Campbell Island, a century ago, a tale which, with the help of pretty scraps of evidence and prettier guesses, makes her out to have been Bonnie Prince Charlie’s granddaughter, kidnapped and banished to this lone spot as an enemy to the still-lingering' Jacobite cause. Certainly an attractive legend for the novelist to work on, Mr Lawson has now expanded and decorated it, using all there was to be used-Mhe heather, the hut, the path, the graves—and weaving the rest, to Marie’s sailing away at last with Dan Main, as fancy spins and colours the threads. There is a final tact in his drawing mystery across the story from which he has conjured it away. THE RIVALS The Evil Heart. By William E. Barrett. Peter Davies. 166 pp. The rivalry of Paul Briscoe and Norman Tannehille is the old one between incorruptible worth and corrupt or corruptible brilliance. Mr Barrett dramatises it with zest. When Paul goes to the university and encounters Norman there, he can match this rich, elegant, dazzling, and commanding fellow in nothing but the footballer’s prowess. It is not surprising that Paul’s girl, Valerie, has her head half turned by Norman’s more spectacular prowess m the air; and here Paul sets himself resolutely to meet his rival’s challenge. There is never any doubt where Mr Barrett’s sympathy lies and who is going to win; but the how of it makes a rather shallow story exciting. WEDGE Home Is the Soldier. By Guy Trent. Hutchinson. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Mr Trent’s novel, without pretending to be profound, describes with lively accuracy the sort of domestic situation that long war-time separations have produced. Bob comes home to find, not the dependent, soft Isobel he had left, but a woman who has developed her confidence and initiative in the world of business. He looks for his lost ideal somewhere else, and drives the wedge between him and Isobel deeper. . . . But the final break that a ruthless realist would insist on is not Mr Trent’s design. KIND AZ A Daughter of Atropos. By Major S. E. G. Ponder. Stanley Paul. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Major Ponder’s fantasy-thriller makes Patricia Tindel, in * the twentieth century, play heroine in the last act of a drama rooted in the days and deeds of Alexander the Great 2300

years ago. On the heights of Kindaz, vaguely located in south-west Asia.' past and present, dead and living, are linked by a strange destiny; and anybody who rejects its logic rejects a very good story.