THE INNOCENT HEART
THE RETURN OF ERICA, by Louise de ++ seit Hamish Hamilton. English price, "HIS gracefully written tale of inno- ' cence in rural France has, for its first hundred pages, the delightful quality of a fabfe. Modern civilisation has not yet reached Bourg-en-Pas, the remote French village where every man is a craftsman-a clockmaker or maker of musical instruments. Erica, the daughter of Elloi Dullum, is loved: by all.for her beauty and purity, and even when she breaks her father’s heart by falling in love with the vagrant Hugo Sandermeur, her friends cannot renounce her. Scenes of dancing on the frozen lake, and the lovers’ trysts in the charcoal burners’ huts at the edge of the forest form a background to the story, until Erica, tormented by her. conflicting allegiances, drowns herself in the village pond. Then, in the final pages, she comes back as a vision to gladden her father’s last days. It is this extension of the fantasy, incompletely realised and out of tone with the rest of the book, which lessens complete enjoyment of the
whole.
P.J.
W.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19491014.2.24.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 538, 14 October 1949, Page 13
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182THE INNOCENT HEART New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 538, 14 October 1949, Page 13
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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