ANOTHER WORLD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 539, 21 October 1949, Page 16

ANOTHER WORLD

HIGH VALLEY, by Charmian Clift and George Jahnston; Angus and _ Robertson, Sydney. 12/6. HIS novel, first prize winner in The Sydney Morning Herald competition of 1948, has a setting so geographically remote, a message so spiritually detached, that it achieves something of the unreality of a fairy tale. Set intan inaccessible Tibetan mountain valley, the

story tells of Salom, a Chinese boy, who journeys forth in search of happiness, finally settling with the nomadic inhabitants of the Valley of the Dreaming Phoenix. Through a combination of extraneous circumstances, however, his life there is a material failure. Also unsuccessful is his love for the headman’s daughter, an emotion that flowers delicately as the tale proceeds. One’ shares the lovers’ calm acceptance of their ordained end. Salom has learnt that for man there is neither victory nor defeat: the only immortality is life, and only by reference to the whole of this can we interpret the ripples caused by a momentary existence. The Living Buddha, too, whose religious philosophy dominates the’ book, has said: "The end of the story will be the best ending, the only ending for each of you." This is a work of the imagination, naive, beautiful but not memorable. The characters are sensitively drawn, the descriptive passages warmly sensuous, though precision is sometimes a little unsatisfactorily sacrificed to effect. But there is insubstantiality everywhere. These our actors, one feels, were all spirits, and this feeling is reinforced by racial and geographical unfamiliarity. As a result, its message conveys no sense of universal significance. The prosaic reader must question the writer’s (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) | knowledge of Tibetan scenery and daily domestic life. Given a more credible background, a delicate, delightful tale would then have been captured for this world.

J.R.

M.