Ruth Park's New Novel

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 734, 7 August 1953, Page 12

Ruth Park's New Novel

A POWER OF ROSES, by Ruth Park; Angus and Robertson. Australian price, 16/-,

(Reviewed by

A.

M.

returns from our King Country, where she was bom and educated, to Sydney’s slums, which supplied the material for her first two books. Bearing’ in mind that I do not know Sydney (which she knows well) I should say A Power of Roses is a‘distinctly better book than The Witch’s Thorn. It may be that it is a harder task to depict the small and relatively isolated community of Te Kano than the crowded, far more varied and yeasty life in a corner of a great city. As in Harp of the Socuth, there is poverty and squalor, advanced realism repellent to many tastes, and cheerfulness and other virtues breaking through the murk. A Power of Roses, however, shows a_ substantial development of Ruth Park’s powers. It has a better plot; the characters are more diverse and Seen more clearly; and generally there is a finer sense of selection, She is still much occupied with the study of. children. Bethell, the central figure in The Witch’s Thorn, is more or less a helpless victim. of circumstances. Miriam, "heroine" of the new novel, stronger in years and character, living near the bread-line with her old pensioner uncle, fights. shrewdly and passionately to make a world for herself in the muddle of want, dirt, and human and material decrepitude. The good fortune she deserves comes to her when she is in sight of womaphood. She is a remarkable creation. Round this practical and imaginative child flows and ebbs a turbid tide of villainy, sickness, © eccentricity, the pathos, horrible at times, of pensioners trying te spin their money out, and charity in its wider sense. The problem presented by lonely old folks, which is now being forced on New Zealand attention by revelation of facts is illuminated by Ruth Park’s imaginative art. The vitality of her people is impressive, and perhaps it is stronger here than before. She is still inclined_to be lush in style at times, but with what verve and’ colour she writes! She has a wonderful gift of spot-lighting a situation with a phrase or two, and calling up beauty in the drabbest surroundings. An old man in a tenement lights the stove for a breakfast cup of tea, without the necessary penny to re-start the meter. "Out of the grease-clogged jets sprang the slim blue arms of the gas, like the petals of a dahlia. . . Suddenly with a feeble whistle the gas sank down, down, then flung up its arms in despair and disappeared down the pipe." | I re-read many of her passages to savour their tartness or sweetness. And the great Harbour Bridge, overarching the human warren, is powerfully brought 2 bear on the tale. Ruth Park has written four novels, and has established herself in Austrelia, New Zealand, Britain, and the United States. Roughly speaking, all of them are about submerged sections of humanity. Will she be content to go on inV her latest novel Ruth Park

definitely working in this field, or will she adventure into something wider, and perhaps sunnier?