A NEW NOVELIST
THE CUNNINGHAMS. By David Ballantyne. The Vanguard Press, New York (3 dollars). HIS is a raw book, but a remarkable achievement for an author of twenty-four. Whether it is cruder than it had to be each reader must judge for himself, and he will of course look for the evidence in his own experience. He will not think it unduly crude if he grew up, as many New Zealanders do, illeducated and poor, among people who have had to turn to gambling, drinking, and sex for excitement, who regard religion as superstition or organised humbug, and whose idea of morality is that it is a code you observe if you can but are something of a freak if you do. We may think the picture true and still coarse, coarser than art required, and feel that a greater artist would have tetained the power and left much of the realism to the imagination. In that case we will condemn the manner in which the material has been handled, but not think that it is shoddy material or deny the power and the fidelity of the reporting. The plot is as old as history-a wife who has a sick husband, respect for him’ still and a lingering fondness, but not enough character to be faithful to him. The fact that his sickness is a legacy of war complicates her emotional disturbances, but is as powerless to keep her "straight" as the affection both parents share for their five children. Then as the years pass the children themselves begin to be problems, and the curtain falls on a weeping widow wondering if she may now go to that one of her two accepted lovers whom she respected and on a boy of 13 and a girl of. 15 quarrelling over the reality of their mother’s grief. It looks as if New Zealand has found a new novelist. The printing and production of the book are far in advance of the standards to which we are accustomed in New Zealand. It should also be pointed out -as a fact and not as a criticism-that the style is as American as the production. It is a picture of New Zealand by a New Zealander workinos ‘with an
American brush.
O.
D.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19490401.2.22.1
Bibliographic details
New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 510, 1 April 1949, Page 10
Word Count
380A NEW NOVELIST New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 510, 1 April 1949, Page 10
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