DESPERATE SINCERITY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 798, 5 November 1954, Page 13

DESPERATE SINCERITY

THE INWARD JOURNEY, by Doris Peel; Victor Gollancz, English pricé 13/-. "HERE is a distinctively feminine kind of writing which one firds at its bést in Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, and at its worst in Wilhélmina Stitch; in thé former case, feminine sensibility sharpens, ¢larifies, illuminates; in the latter, sensibility gives Way to gush, and contefit is subMerged in a welter of rhetoric. In both eases, style indicates the calibre of mind. Regrettably, style detracts from Miss Peel’s account of her experiences at the Berlin Peace Conferénce. What cafi ohe say of: "O beautiful sight!the lemony gléw of lighted witidows’’? Or of the breathless parentheses of: "Kathe, I believe what you say, I believé you care, with your whole heart. And I honour that caritig-I want you to know that, becausé that’s where we can meet; where we aré tméeting! But the way you'vé chosen, that’s something else." Or of the repetitive "one thought," and "one couldn't." ahd "one’s heart." Miss Peel is an Amefican of emancipated background and fomantic disposition, eagerly searching for significant persona] relationships among the jarring sects of post-war Europe. Drago, Viktor. | Miloje. Koca. Dimitri, Katya, Nadya | and Kip are among her collectidn of the road to Trieste, noné of them as significant as Liesl, Kathe and Ernst, "chief of the border police." whom she met at the Peace Conferetice, Through her contact with these three convinced Communists she explores the enigma of Bach and Buchenwald. and the practical problem of cé-éxisterice, both of which she tries to solve on the level of evangelism and change of heart. Miss Peel has tha power to ¢énvey her own desperate sincerity, at times: more often she oppresses. Nevertheless, she fives af iftefesting subjective account of types behind the Iron Curtain

J.R.

T.