THE CLAIMS OF LOVE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 873, 27 April 1956, Page 13

THE CLAIMS OF LOVE

ASPECTS OF LOVE, by David Garnett; Chatto and Windus, English price 8/6. WOMEN DIE TWICE, by Paule Lafeuille; Victor Gollancz, English price 10/6. SHADOWED JOURNEY, by Mavis Winder; A. H. and A. W. Reed Ltd., N.Z. price 9/6. A PIECE OF LUCK, by Frances Gray Patton; Victor Gollancz, English price 12/6. HE aspect of love which chiefly preoccupies David Garnett in his new short novel (first for 20 years) is its unpredictability. Rose, the first heroine, is French, matter of fact, and embarrassingly honest. She finds it perfectly straightforward to pass on from a juvenile Englishman to his sixty-year-old uncle. Years later it is equally suitable for the same young man to fall in love with Rose’s fourteen-year-old daughter. The plot is neat-a diminished version of La Ronde. The treatment is decorous. The whole »work is graceful. Am I imagining things, or do I detect a certain weariness? Sophistication, too-under a facade of goggling simplicity-is the dominant characteristic of Women Die Twice. Incidentally, its blurb is more than usually misleading. Like David Garnett’s book, this novel translated from the French, is neat, short and handles loves with (continued on next page)

BOOKS

(continued from previous page) great delicacy. (It is interesting that the meaning assigned to "love" is progressively narrowing in ‘the hands of present-day novelists.) It is perhaps a little hard on a local writer to judge her work alongside two such slick performers as Garnett and Paule Lafeuille, but our own novelists will never be worth much if they have to be judged by special standards. (Nor will we develop a responsible criticism by maintaining a double standard.) Shadowed Journey is written round the Tangiwai disaster, and the use made of this event in developing the plot is ingenious. But the treatment and characterisation are wooden and the dialogue is realistic enough to be banal. The short story seems now to be a living art only in America. Mrs, Patton reproduces perfectly the vigorous, wisecracking brightness of the best American conversation. Her stories are good and refreshingly varied. Their insights into human nature are at a higher level than those of most contemporary novel-

ists.

David

Hall