ROMANCE
AFTER THE HOLIDAY, by Louise Collis; Faber and Faber, English price 12/6. THE CROOKED WALL, by Ruth Compton Mackenzie; Jonathan Cape, English price 10/6. FANFARE FOR A WITCH, by Vaughan Wilkins; Jonathan Cape, English price 12/6. THEODORA AND THE EMPEROR, by ead Lamb; Robert Hale, English price BeY meets girl, boy sheers off and meets another girl. First girl, a prissy piece, anyway, makes herself a career and laughs at the world. This, with some teasing thought transitions in the vein of Elizabeth Bowen (The Heat of the Day), makes up Louise Collis’s contemporary novel, something slightly more ambitious than is quite warranted. But I shall be on the look out for her next novel. The Crooked Wall is a jate Victorian period piece, with the background skilfully filled in. Husbands prove to be a tiresome intrusion upon girlhood friendships. It ends in a nicely-managed murder. The whole book is slow-moving, sedate and--may I say it without a sneer?-ladylike. Vaughan Wilkins endeavours, most manfully, in Fanfare for a Witch to make a hero of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the unlucky son-father sandwiched in between George II and George Ill. Even with the addition of an English sultana from Morocco and her devoted American-Turk and some violence thrown in, the theme droops on its many romantic bolsters. But it may well be popular. Harold. Lamb writes, not a novel but a "biographical narrative," sub-titled "The Drama of Justinian." The history is sound and balanced, and he has chosen one of the great moments of the Byzantine story. But alas! the style endeavours to prod the Drama (a capital certainly) into too rapid motion. His book seems to fall between the two stools of scholarship and romance.
David
Hall
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 776, 4 June 1954, Page 14
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288ROMANCE New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 776, 4 June 1954, Page 14
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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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