FORTUNE OF WAR
1939. By Kay Boyle. Faber and Faber. HIS is an. ambitious novel, skilfully contrived, But is it quite a success? One says to oneself, "Kay Boyle-aeh, yes! she knows the French, of course." ‘But does she? Compare this book with a French novel, and its occasional ungainly Gallicisms ("badly farded’’) ‘look grotesque, and the passionate and ‘ardent Corinne Audal, who has the great good fortune to be descended from both ‘the ancient nobility of France and ‘Napoleon’s generals, becomes a creature of air, without bowels or breeding, a novelist’s wraith. And her lover, Ferdl Eder, the young Austrian ski-instructor who has turned his back on his own country and a respectable career, is he a person who comes to life? ‘ In many ways this novel has the virtueg and limitations of a prolonged short story. It begins with the reveries, the looking before and after and pining. for what is not, of Corinne at the moment when Ferdl has left her at the outbreak of war to join the French forces as a volunteer. This portion of the book ends with Corinne’s passionate denials of what the chemist, Tarboux (an excellent character), is warning her will hap- pen to Ferdl, that he wil] not go into the army, but into a concentration camp limbo with all the other equivocal foreigners who might by _ existing threaten the war-time security of France. The second ‘section parades the ‘reveries of Ferdi, somewhat more clumsily handled, and his self-examina-tion reveals him a hollow man, a sort ,of gigolo to match with his film-star
bes ’ : Nordic handsomeness Corinne’s jealous and adulterous affection for him. His relations with his family, whom he has in effect abandoned for ever, are poisoned equally by Corinne’s possessiveness and his own weakness, It does not seem altogether unjust that he is to be interned rather than allowed to fight for France. The method of the book has too much of the flash-back, or flash-hither-and-yonder, as the thoughts of the characters turn their pallid spotlight on . their peculiar miseries and ardours. The concentration on a limited theme, on a particular juncture in a relation- | ship, is, however, an element of strength. 1939 is an interesting novel in spite of Kay Boyle’s occasional tendency to over-
write,
David
Hall
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 499, 14 January 1949, Page 12
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380FORTUNE OF WAR New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 499, 14 January 1949, Page 12
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