SOME OF THE NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31107, 9 July 1966, Page 4

SOME OF THE NEW NOVELS

The Watchers on the Shore. Stan Barstow. Michael Joseph. 240 pp.

This novel is a sequel to Stan Barstow’s very successful first novel “A Kind of Loving” but it can be read without reference to its predecessor. In it the author takes up the story of the young couple Vic and Ingrid after three years of marriage He examines the pressures put on Vic by a new job and life in a new town away from the old familiar ways and places of his boyhood and youth. He shows Vic’s delight in meeting new people and discovering new worlds and his growing resentment of the restricted world in which Ingrid seems determined to live. The conflict which this causes in Vic's mind is clearly revealed and it is shown that while he acts as he thinks best he is not without doubts, “Going forward I’m thinking. Going in fear and trembling but forward, knowing the best and hoping against hope that it’ll come to you; and just refusing to notice, just simply trying not to acknowledge how cold and dark it is outside.” The writing is crisp and meaningful, the dialogue easy and natural and the plot adequate. Moreover the central character it is suggested is one with whom the young person of today can identify himself. Stan Barstow has succeeded in drawing a realistic and moving picture of Vic’s predicament and of his honesty in facing it and finding a solution for himself while trying to avoid hurting others.

The Lockwood Concern. By John O’Hara. Hodder and Stoughton. 407 pp.

The twin themes of this long novel which covers four generations and is set in Pennsylvania are status-seek-ing and sex. It is the story of the Lockwoods—Moses (born 1811), Nathan (born 1840), George (born 1873) and George Bing (born 1899). Their “Concern” is not, as the reader might suppose, a family business. The word is used in the same context as that employed by the Quakers, when those good people have set their hearts upon achieving a worthy object, but there the resemblance to the Quakers ends. The “Concern” of three of the four Lockwoods was simply to build up their fortunes in their home town of Swedish Haven, and achieve social recognition in a wider world. Moses had got them off to a bad start by killing two men, and being tried (but acquitted) for the manslaughter of the second. Nathan had his own skeleton in the cupboard to keep hidden in the shape of two insane sisters-in-law. It is the brilliant George and his brother Penrose who come nearest to making the stock respectable, though Pen (one of the few decent characters in the book) lets the side down by a rash act for which George was indirectly responsible. The character of George is extremely well drawn. He was handsome, likeable, and entirely without scruple. His son Bing, having run away from home after being sent down from Princeton for cheating in exams, was less likeable, but had the family flair for making money, despite the bad streak which ran through all of them. The sexual prowess of the family was formidable, and their promiscuity though carefully covered up, a source

of great unhappiness to their long-suffering wives. The history of the Lockwoods is a rather dreary commentary on the type of values inherent in a society based for its patent of nobility on material wealth, and proves the truth of the Preacher’s well-known animadversion: “Vanity, Vanity, all is vanity.”

Memoirs of a New Man. By William Cooper. Macmillan. 277 pp.

Bureaucracy has been for some years the butt of satirists, but there is a freshness about William Cooper’s approach together with a considerable knowledge of his subject that makes this book deliciously funny. The grim struggle for power in the hierarchy of the National Power Board, and oblique manoeuvring® for and against changes in the student composition of Clarendon College, Oxford, both involve Jack Carteret who is a part-time member of the first, and a Professor of Science at the second. Jack, like most of his colleagues has risen from comparatively humble beginnings, and as one of the advisers of the N.P.B. he is an almost detached witness of the rivalries of its three departments, and the wiliness of the chairman (an ex-treasury official) in his policy of "divide and rule.” Clarendon College has become a battlefield between the scientists for whom it had been newly created, and a handful of Arts fellows who are bent upon leavening the undergraduate body with a large number of their own candidates. Burrowing deeply, like a fat mole in his own particular interests (Coal and Oil) on the N.P.B. is Herbert Hobbs, a trades-union-boss type, with two underlings whom he is anxious to advance, but the main struggle on that public-service institution is between the chairman and vice-chairman who detest each other and use the N.P.B. as a battlefield of their conflicting opinions. Jack Carteret and his delightful, aristocratic wife watch developments with an experienced but not wholly disinterested! eye in both the academic and bureaucratic contests, and Mr I Cooper must have had an t enjoyable time resolving their respective problems in his own inimitable way, His characterdrawing is admirable, which will make the reader forgive him for coining unnecessary variants of familiar words such as “temperacy” and “judgematically.” The Cherry Pit By Donald Harington. Gollancz. 342 pp. What happens when a girl unknowingly seeking a fatherfigure meets a man unknowingly seeking a mother-figure? In the hands of Donald Harington a great deal happens —even in the space of two weeks, the length of time covered by this writer’s first novel. Clifford Stone, aged 28, married and employed as a curator for the Cabot Foundation, Boston, where he “helps to locate unusual craft objects and other articles indigenous to the Vanished American Past,” is involved in a situation with his superior. Miss Ovett, leading her to suggest he has been overworking and needs a holiday. Many women would have been less understanding and sued him. He announces to his wife, Pamela, that he is taking a holiday. She is sarcastic, frigid, and entirely self-sufficient When she refuses to accompany him to

his home town. Little Rock, Arkansas, Clifford goes alone. Little Rock is one of those provincial cities which at once repels and fascinates; those of its sons who leave it are drawn back and, having returned, can see only its imperfections and wonder why they came. In this disillusioned frame of mind Nub, as Clifford is more usually called in his Jiome town, telephones former friends hoping to resume old relationships; they are not interested. Wearily, he decides to return to Boston. Filling in time until his train leaves, he goes to a cinema, where he holds the hand of the young woman sitting next to him, only to find she is a former girl-friend from college days—Margaret Austin. Over coffee after the film Margaret, usually shy and withdrawn, confides in Nub and he becomes deeply concerned with her welfare. Is she sane? Or is she, in her bizarre actions, the victim of circumstances? Struck anew by her beauty and by her loneliness, he delays his return to Boston. Together with Dall Hawkins, a police sergeant, and Naps (Napoleon) Howard, a wealthy Negro bookseller. Nub attempts to unravel Margaret’s problems and for a while succeeds only in increasing his own. The author treats his story lightly, but there is an underlying compassion for his characters which makes this more than a mere account of a man’s search for his past in his home town. Mr Harington has a wide vocabulary, ranging from unusual alliterations (fructuous firmament) to the more common four-letter words. He has an eye for the contradictions of life; the hero in elevator shoes miserably conscious of his lack of inches; the radio announcer exuding bonhomie to all over the air but choosing his friends only from those who are socially “in”;

the wealthy college graduate Naps, changing his style of speech from that of an educated man to that of an ignorant “darkle” as circumstances dictate. These are real people. Their characters are consistent through all events. Perhaps the author, delighting in the unexpected, leads his readers to anticipate a more dramatic ending, but sometimes irony is nearer to truth than drama. The Mark of Murder. By Dell Shannon. Gollancz. 285 pp. While lieutenant Luis Mendoza of the Los Angeles Police Department is on holiday in Bermuda, an unattractive and antisocial character, known as the Slasher begins carving up the Los Angeles citizenry in a way that Is contrary to morality and good manners. He also attempts to derail an express train. Sergeant Hackett, a friend and colleague of Mendoza, is gravely injured while Investigating the murder of a chiropractor who has an illegal side-line to his practice. This murder forms what might be termed the “second subject” of this wellconstructed piece in sonata form. Mendoza has to return to throw light upon dark places. He does it well and the story follows credible police procedure, except that some clues might reasonably have been recognised and followed up more quickly, thus avoiding further mayhem. Lieutenant Mendoza is a Mexican, and bis frequent throwing in of Spanish phrases is as annoying as sandflies on a summer’s day. He owns four Siamese cats, and the author is obviously familiar with such animals’ wicked ways. He is also a millionaire something unusual among hard-working detectives. The money is probably inherited, as be is an honest cop.