MEN AND BEASTS
UNDER THE INFLUENCE, by Geoffrey Kerr; Michael Joseph, English price 10/6; A KID FOR TWO FARTHINGS, by Wolf Mankowitz; Andre Deutsch, English price 7/6; MAN AND BEAST, by Phyllis Bottome; Faber and Faber, English price 7/6. NDER THE INFLUENCE is a highspirited thriller. The story is carried forward in a series of shrewdly contrived first person narratives describing the central incident. Each person speaking in his own voice reveals not only his character but also his guilt. The mild young bank clerk with the embarrassing gift of reading people’s thoughts after he has had a few drinks, and the rest of Mr. Kerr’s genial dim types, recall a less boisterous and more subtle Wodehouse. : A Kid for Two Farthings is freshly written, impudent and genuinely funny.
Its hero is Joe, aged six, who lives in Fashion Street in the East End of London. Joe buys a unicorn which to other people looks like a small goat. But not to Joe, who knows it can grant the most urgent wishes of the people of Fashion Street. Poverty and the people’s attempts to live with it are, through Joe’s eyes, silhouetted against the imaginative landscape of childhood. Wolf Mankowitz is completely at home in the East End, and the illustrations by James Boswell give the story another dimension. Miss Bottome’s obvious affection for animals and admiration of their intelligence have produced five brief \stories. Man and Beast is concerned, variously with mental affinity between individuals and a lion, tiger, horse, dog and prize bull; a romantic conception of the rapprochement that can exist between man and beast. Miss Bottome does not entirely avoid the trap that opens before those who write about animals, and sen-
timent becomes sentimentality.
C.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540122.2.25.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 757, 22 January 1954, Page 13
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290MEN AND BEASTS New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 757, 22 January 1954, Page 13
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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