Strong Meat

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 455, 12 March 1948, Page 8

Strong Meat

HE first episode of Hatter’s Castle which I heard from 2ZB on a recent Saturday was sufficiently forceful to rivet me to the microphone for the requisite quarter-of-an-hour. A particularly happy choice, I felt, since the strong pathological flavour should endear it to the sponsors (a patent medicine firm) and the Scottish accents to those listeners who have become accustomed to their dose of Doctor Mac at this hour. On the other hand it would be difficult to find anything that provides more of a contrast to the Polly--anna-ism of the Doctor Mac chronicles. We are so used to being fed upon serials of family life, firmly rooted in the tradition that in spite of little surface frictions (useful in providing warp and woof for the scriptwriter’s loom) Everybody Loves Everybody Underneath, that it is with deliciously guilty enjoyment. that we take time off to listen to James Brodie being horribly rude to everybody, and not, mind you, because he is anxious to hide from the world that soft succulent heart of gold beneath. , .. Moreover all the characters are drawn with a definiteness reminiscent of the school of painting that draws a thick black line around each object, a definiteness which in the book makes for unreality, but for clarity when these characters must make themselves known to us by aural means alone. (We even heard Grandma supping her tea.) Hatter’s Castle is Strong Meat, and therefore very suitable for dishing out in easily digested 15-minute portions. You get all the flavour and none of the deleterious after-effects noticed by those who have scoffed the book at a single sitting.