PEOPLE'S ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 409, 24 April 1947, Page 30

PEOPLE'S ART

THE PASSAGE. By Vance Palmer, and FLESH IN ARMOUR. By Leonard Mann. Both published by Robertson and Mullens Ltd., Melbourne. HE blurb on the jacket of Vance Palmer’s book describes it as "powerful" and "full of the surge of the sea and elemental passions," so that it is a relief to find it a slow-moving story of family life in a Queensland fishing village. The village itself as much as the Cailaway family is the theme of' the book, but its characters are faithfully drawn, and the beauty of the natural setting in which they are placed has evidently stirred the imagination of the writer. Leonard Mann’s novel traces the adventures of a typical handful of the A.LF. in the 1914-18 war, on leave in England and in action in France. The idiom of the Australian soldier, so far as it is printable, is recap‘uréd, and the book might fairly be described as the biography of the Unknown Soldier rather than the separate stories of individuals. The writing is often curiously old-fashioned: " .... pushing aside her blouse he had kissed her at the commencement of her breast." But it manages to tell a plein tale plainly. The women characters do come off rather badly; they are simply made conveniences, for the soldiers and for the author.

The Little Country and Civilian into Soldier are’ the New Zealand equivalents, very roughly, of these books, which are reprints in a cheap edition, sponsored by the Commonwealth Literary Fund, which I hope is as important as it sounds.

David

Hall