WARMTH AND LIGHT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 535, 23 September 1949, Page 18

WARMTH AND LIGHT

THE HEAT OF THE DAY, by Elizabeth Bowen; Cape. English pfice, 9/6. HE small cat that followed us home to-night is walking on the paper, smudging the ink and leaving its footprints on the page, curiously sniffing at my moving hand. Books seldom contain anything as enticing as kittens. Elizabeth Bowen’s new novel is perhaps an exception to this denigration

of books. It is written in a seemingly careless, unbuttoned style which avoids precision, accumulates significant detail and seeps: through the reader's consciousness by a process so néarly imperceptible. it. is like. the heart’s affection itself; when did one first surrender to this person or to that? It is unknowable, but still a fact. Elizabeth Bowen in Orion II and in the preface to her Faber Book of Short Stories has written more perceptively of the creative processes in fiction than anybody now living, not excluding E. M. Forster. The strong emphasis she places on relevance in story-telling is important in assessing the quality of her own work. By her own standards she is rather precariously successful. The sub-plot of this new novel, the misadventures of Connie and Louie, is tacked on very loosely to the main theme. The main action is never so perfectly integrated that the reader’s questions are all answered. Indeed the irresolute handling of the character of Robert-who loves Stella and (quite incredibly) sells his country’s secrets to the enemy-is a major blemish. This is rather ungrateful. The Heat of the Day is one of the best novels to appear in England since the war. It marks a new highwater mark for Elizabeth Bowen herself. Her heroine, Stella, with a grown-up son but still attractive enough to be-a bone of contention between Robert and Harrison, the caddish sleuth sent to watch his pro-enemy activities, is a magnificent creation. The atmosphere of a family (and that of Robert’s family, too, the terrible Kelways) is superbly sketched, and with it a satisfying picture drawn of wartime England with all its small annoyances or privations and large dangers or heroisms. Elizabeth. Bowen writes this novel with a rich carelessness which is the result of immense assurance and which hides but does not diminish her narrative skill, The artlessness is deliberate: few. books are so precisely steered to a ‘desired conclusion, She is at the top of her bent. Her next novel may be even. more rewarding. The kitten is asleep on my knee, surrendering the field absolutely to Elizabeth Bowen.

David

Hall