GOOD STORIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 526, 22 July 1949, Page 19

GOOD STORIES

FOUR COUNTRIES. By William Plomer, Jonathan Cape. English price, 10/6. VWILLIAM .PLOMER’S skill in the short story form, characterised by a clear, detached vision and an absence of distracting technical devices, is at its best in this selection chosen from the many stories he has published during the past twenty years. Mofeover, the inclusion of "The Night Before the War," which originally appeared in Penguin New Writing, reveals that Mr. Plomer has sometimes concealed his identity behind the pseudonym Robert Pagan, In the introduction the author states his case for the dramatic story which

illuminates a conflict or crisis in the lives of people, as opposed to the impressionistic sketch. And most of the stories in Four Countries are built about tensions arising from frictions of class or race. In "The Wedding Guest" a woman who had risen in Edwardian society and who had come down again, recalls a grotesque memory to the disadvantage of her social betters. "Ula Masondo" expresses the tragic predicament of African natives following the impact of Westernism and the destruction of tribal life. "A Piece of Good Luck," an ambitious and highly successful long story, traces the history of an awkward, bashful Japanese village girl who goes alone to work in Tokyo. In the stories of Greece the _ natives, sensuous and seemingly corrupt, emerge from their encounters with Nordic visitors superior in vitality and uninhibited grace. William Plomer has shared in the life of peoples in the exotic countries about which he writes. His stories are expressions of rich experience, and not of the superficial interest of a tourist. Like his confessed masters, De Maupassant and Ivan Bunin (author of "The Gentleman from San Francisco"), he succeeds in establishing passion and meaning within the limits of the short

story.

John Reece

Cole