ESCAPED PRISONER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 382, 18 October 1946, Page 19

ESCAPED PRISONER

THE WAY OUT: A KIWI ESCAPES IN ITALY. By Malcolm J. Mason. (Printed by the Caxton Press for Paul’s Book Arcade, Hamilton). T is at least three years since it began -to be dangerous to print books by prisoners of war. But it is dangerous in another way not to print them, since experiences not recorded soon fade, and young nations can’t afford to neglect anything that gives them traditions; especially any printed thing. So Captain Mason did well to write his story, and Paul’s Book Arcade to risk printing it. If only enough copies could be sold to pay expenses the venture would be in the public interest. But the publishers did better than that. They saw that those who take one risk must usually take another, so set out to make it the most attractive book in its class yet printed. It was not a case of making a fine bird out of fine feathers, but of taking care that the feathers should be worthy of the bird and in themselves arresting. This end has been handsomely / achieved, partly with the printer’s aid, partly with the assistance of a very attractive dust cover by Juliet Peter. But even with those aids the publishers would have ' been walking on very thin ice if the story itself had not been so good, But it is just about as convincing a war story as New Zealand has so far had. Captain Mason is as far from being a writer as a navigator is from being a ship designer, but he knows precisely where he wants. to go and what he wants to say, and this quality carries him safely through cliches, repetitions, sentimentalities, and leaves him absolutely high and dry at the end, the story told, the excitement sustained, the adventure rounded off. There are times when he seems almost perversely determined to write as the average man speaks-without distinction, accuracy, or care. It is partly deliberate, partly in fact his style; in other words, himself. But when you close the book you know that you have had one man’s story told precisely as it happened and carried through unerringly to the end.