A New Book

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 372, 9 August 1946, Page 5

A New Book

ELIBERATELY this week, and some readers will think perversely, we devote what may easily be New Zealand’s longest book review to New Zealand’s least popular author-nine columns to a book which has certainly not yet been read by nine hundred people. We are almost depressing enough to go further and say that if one per cent. of New Zealanders ever read it, that will be three or four times as many as its author dreams of in his most reckless moments. But we do not apologise for the review. To begin with, it establishes Mr. Holcroft as a creative New Zealand writer; one of three or four in a hundred years. In the second place, it honours .authorship as an occupation. Finally it emphasises the fact that art begins at home. Mr. Holcroft. might, as the review points out, have established himself in London. It is possible, though unlikely, that he might have achieved a success there that he would in the end have found satisfying. But he came back to New Zealand to complete himself as a New Zea-lander-to feel and think as a New Zealander and express himself in New Zealand books. The measure of his success is properly a matter of debate, but Mr. McCormick, who speaks with authority on that subject — we think with more authority than any other New Zealander at present has-puts it high, It is cei‘ain that it is an original success, that Mr. Holcroft is now neither an echo nor a shadow but a new voice, and that his accents are our own. Whether it is kind, or wise, to suggest that having conquered one -mountain he should now attack another, only Mr. Holcroft knows. But thousands of New Zealanders now know that he is making us articulate, unlocking our minds and untying our tongues, and that only one or two others have ever done it before.