KERSH AND OTHERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 649, 7 December 1951, Page 14

KERSH AND OTHERS

THE THOUSAND DEATHS OF MR. SMALL, by Gerald Kersh; Heinemann, English price, 15/-. MADAME SERPENT, by Jean Plaidy; Robert Hale. English price, 10/6. IMMORTAL WHEAT, by Kathleen Wallace; _. Heinemann. English price, 12/6. FRIGHT IN THE FOREST, by Benn Sowerby; Rupert Hart-Davis. English price, 10/6. HE best of this ill-assorted bunch is Gerald Kersh’s lengthy recreation of a Jewish family milieu of a monstrous and fascinating vulgarity. It is his most deeply-felt and personal novel-and probably his best. At the top of his hogcalling voice and with a wealth of scatological humour, he describes the domestic strife of Yisroel Small (né Schmulowitz) and his wife, as seen by their self-tor-menting son, Charles. It is as if James Joyce had rewritten Tales from the Ghetto in collaboration with 4 circus clown. Solly Schwartz, the Machiavellian hunchback who becomes a business tycoon, is a striking creation, at once comic and repulsive. This is a memorable, sordid novel, stinking with life, almost overpowering in its energy — the unique product of a rich and exasperating talent. | Madame Serpent is a conscientious pecyel about Catherine de Medici. In its explanation of the ambivalence of this ‘remarkable Queen of France through a

study of her years as a neglected wife, the book is not unsuccessful. It is detailed, certainly "educative," and shows courage in stopping short before the incidents which won Catherine historical notoriety, but seems to me to lack any real creative force. Yet another cultist book about the Brontés, Immortal Wheat combines a romanticised ictional biography with often provocative accounts of the Brontés’ novels. Miss Wallace has made somewhat debatable use of Fanny Ratchford’s study of the Bronté juvenilia, but unfortunately has not also taken advantage of Elsie Harrison’s work. She writes as a devotee, often in that hyperbolic style which characterises many admirers of the gifted sisters. Ben Sowerby’s imaginative autobiography of Peter Pinel, calculatedly plotless, tells of a search for inner security against the compulsion of the second self. The period, never explicitly stated, appears to be Victorian, and the style is skilfully unmodern. Undertones of in- | sanity are suggested as the hero rejects’ "les autres" for his private universe. The | novel is’ original, highly self-conscious and rather over-written, but often transmits a moving intensity of experience. I am not sure, however, that the "authentic unreality" commended in Siegfried Sassoon’s preface compensates for a sense of morbid self-indulgence and an

uncertain grip on real life.

J. C.

R.