LIFE WITH EACH OTHER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 659, 22 February 1952, Page 13

LIFE WITH EACH OTHER

THE YELLOW STORM, by Lau Shaw; Victor Gollancz. English price, 15/-. ROBIN WASTRAW, by E..H. W. Meyerstein; Victor Gollancz. English price, 12/6. ROSIE HOGARTH, by Alexander Baron; Jonathan Cape. English price, 10/6. MEN AT WORK, by Winton Clewes; Michael Joseph. English price, 10/6. "THE four generations of Grandfather '" Li’s family in Lau Shaw’s Yellow Storm had a major social problem on their hands. They were’ living together in their courtyard in the Street of Little Sheep Fold when the Japanese came to Peiping. They understood the meaning of family loyalty, and knew the value of a united front in the face of any action from other parts of the street. The invasion, though, forced on them a new and larger concept of their family "life, that of themselves as part of a nation ... it was not an easy idea to assimilate, and it took sacrifice and courage before they, and millions like them, were able to accept it. Lau Shaw, who is a Chinese doctor in Peiping, writes vividly and with insight into Chinese ways of. thinking and living. The Yellow Storm deserves a place among the best books on modern China. Robin Wastraw is a book for anyone who can appreciate wit and gentle fantasy handled in prose with a poet’s skill. E. H. W. Meyerstein has brought Robin as a boy, and later as a young man, into touch with a society of characters just near enough to reality to have a cutting edge, and yet not too near to let them lose their out-of-this-worldish charm, It’s a pity that one can never hope to meet Aunt Barbara (whose chief skill is to make a _ black-currant pudding so that no fruit shows on the outside), or the donnish Swabb of the deliberately unambitious Sir Cecil Glynne of Broggards, or hope for an amorous encounter with Bertha Hoyer de Hoe. However, it is'some consolation to know that ‘they are available in Mr. Meyerstein’s novel for a few hours’ acquaintance at any time. Rosie Hogarth, by Alexander Baron. is the story of.a triangle of sorts. "Of sorts," because one side of the triangle is a dream; the other two are formed by the solid, down-to-earth Jack Agass. and his fiancee, Joyce Wakerell. Probably there. are more men than. care to admit it who carry about with them the memory of some early sweetheart, distant, remote, and. yet ‘remaining a perpetual. possibility. That was what Rosie Hogarth | been to "Jack Agass through the war years and afterwards during his exile in Asia Minor. One can

feel only .too strongly for Agass ‘when he trades his dream of Rosie for the somewhat vinegary reality of Joyce. Perhaps, though, the story would have been better if Rosie did not appesr. or even if she appeared differently to the way she does. The rarified air of intellectualism and Higher Politics is too far above the comfortable fug of Lamb Street for the force of the difference between. the dream Rosie and the woman that Agass finally meets to be felt. Winston Clewes in his Men at Work writes of people living together, not in

a family, but in a firm. Willerby Pressings was a modern, well-organised factory, run with the help of works coun-. cils and everything necessary for worker participation. Yet, for no apparent Treason, the workers struck. Oddly enough, this is not a story of Communist interference or union autocracy. It is a story of ordinary men and a tangle of circumstance, Clewes, who is organisation manager for a large English company, has had plenty of experience of the chain reaction of events which can start from the most trivial thing, His book has no particular moral to point; it only sets out the possibilities of human pettiness and

irresponsibility.

PIC