DAYS IN AMBER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 790, 10 September 1954, Page 12

DAYS IN AMBER

WHITE TOPEE, by Eve Langley; Angus and Robertson, Australian price 16/-.

(Reviewed by

David

Hall

R complete acceptance and enjoyment of this book one needs special equipment. One should be Australian-born. Then’ again one should have been an admirer of that extinct form, the essay-Robert Lynd and all that-for this is not so much a novel-without-a-plot as a collection of autobiographical essays. The basis of these memoirs of a young girl in Gippsland between 1927 and 1929 is emotion recollected in tran-quillity--grand days of hard work in the sun, grand nights drinking coffee or wine with those quaint Italian land workers, and at all hours headier draughts of ecstasy, far keener no doubt in retrospect than ever in actuality. The first piece is tiresomely overwritten. Later in the book Eve Langley gets into her stride or gets used to her own cleverness-and it is much more comfortable reading than the beginning, where page after page makes one snigger or wince-"utterly -Australian" (a comment on a girl’s appearance); "the frozen snow tiger that the tropical orchid is"; "emperorian charm"; "Long and noble and blazingly Greek in the blue heavens above were the days I worked for Tom Henderson. . ." She has a classical fixation, and many things are Greek or Grecian. "A wide blue sky from which at evening the great Ajax or Hector of Troia seemed to lean downward to me.. ." Critics have been offered this salutary advice: reflect whether a writer’s greatest weakness is not in fact his greatest strength. I must ‘admit that Eve Langley’s prinked-up ecstasies do often come off. Her heightened style can succeed magnificently. "Greedily I held on to the days; meticulously I embalmed them within myself. I built up strong years in my cells. I tied myself to eternity with lofty thoughts." The disadvantage of her method-apart from its hit-or-miss risks-is the contrast between the sophisticated vehicle and the way of life described. For she is telling us about the satisfying natural

and almost primitive life of the Victorian outback, peopled by men and women she shows are the salt of the earth, in a prose in a high degree the Product of literary artifice. The merits of this book are its extraordinary zest for life and the completeness and detail of the picture she draws. She tells us-in between her feats of emotional athleticism-all about tea growing, bean sorting, pea-picking and every other type of farm work. Her people are human and their observer herself has plenty of humour. This book is strong enough to stand a lot of abuse, and Eve Langley’s greatest strength (which sometimes betrays her into moments of weakness) is her power of conveying her own heightened sense of beauty. ,I would like to see someone write in this way about New Zealand.