BLEEDING HEARTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 742, 2 October 1953, Page 13

BLEEDING HEARTS

FENNY, by Lettice Cooper;. Victor Gollancz. English price, 12/6. PATIENCE, by John Coates; Victor Gollancz. English price, 10/6.° CASINO ROYALE, by Tan Fleming; a * than Cape. English price, 10/6. HE WOUNDED, by Tom Clarkson; English price, 9/6. AS a class, English governesses have had a literary coverage out of all proportion to their numbers, and, to my mind, out of proportion to their interest as individuals. True, they are usually women of exquisite sensibility, but the meticulous chronicles of their passage from youth to decay make uniformly dull teading. In Fenny the governess suffers a ruined love affair at the hands of a grasping woman employer. Sixteen years and 300 leisurely pages later, she prevents a somewhat similar fate befalling her one-time pupil, the daughter of that employer. That is the plot. The rest is dull and dusty upholstery. It is. I should.mention.. a Book Society choice, ae On. the dust jacket of Patience. Theodora. Benson * writes: "Here, for once, and free from all. offence, is a novel that make -_ ‘open weather about sex.’ Re de y be pardoned, however, if they ju ge Mr. Coates is not the man ‘to. _make* adultery, divorce and marriage: laws ‘ike anything other than bleak midwinter. ~ Casino Royale has for its principals a brilliant British secret agent named James Bond, and a baleful infiltrator of trade unions named Le Chiffre. The latter’s union is "an. important fifthcolumn in the event of war with RedJarid," so when the pair gamble for 50 million francs of union funds everything is loaded except-believe it or not-the dice. Bond takes the bank, but Le Chiffre takes Bond, and not being British, resorts to torture, Finally, however, the goodies take all, Bond takes the alluring female spy who has, been around all this time, and the spies that spy upon.Soviet spies quietly erase Le son o

Chiffre. The dust jacket-designed bv the author-is appropriately decorated with bleeding hearts. By contrast, there is something fresh and clean about The Wounded, which belies its sordid East London: setting. Clarkson’s characters are ordinary people, stupid and restricted and. unlovely. Their environment is the drab streets and cinemas and billiard rooms of a modern city. Yet there is a nobility in their emotions that makes them still the strangely wonderful beings that are men. Clarkson’s prose is sometimes too carefully coloured, "The great noise of summer, like a huge drum or cymbal, hung over the park. The sunyou could almost hear it beating-was so bright as to be an unidentifiable effulgence. . ." But as often as not the images are accurate and adequate. Readers should. not allow the exceptions to prevent them looking into this book. —

A.S.

F.