THREE KINDS OF FICTION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 877, 25 May 1956, Page 14

THREE KINDS OF FICTION

THE STORY-TELLER, by Gil Buhet; OCCASION OF GLORY, by Arthur GalderMarshall; AUTUMN. TERM, by Joan Whitty: all published by Jonathan Cape at 13/6 English price. "| HE publishers are as consistent in quality as-in price, but the three authors quite remarkable in their differences. The Story-Teller is French, slick, sophisticated; Occasion for Glory, set in Mexico, passionate and arresting; Autumn Term mellowly English. The Story-Teller begins powerfully, with a mysterious manuscript, by a mysterious woman, sent to a corrupt agency in Lyons, at the end of World War II. Her style is modelled on Gide; but the "I" person, the manager of the agency, can’t keep it up, or sustain the atmosphere of the "book-within-the-book." He is, perhaps, too clever. The emotional somersaults necessary to produce a good detective novel ruin the novel as such; and by the time the mvstery is solved it has evaporated. Yet there remains the certainty that Gil Buhet can do better; and that the first half of this book, published as an unfinished manuscript by an anonymous author, would set literary tongues wagving. Here there is fine, peculiarly French sophistication, allied to flawless characterisation. . . But, no, the rest won’t do, The end undoes the beginning. Occasion of Glory is better sustained; and if there is a flaw here it is of a different kind, to be subjectively determined, An allegory on the Crucifixion, it has as its hero a patriot loving his land. Against a mock-pageant of Easter he moves to certain death, with the inevitability of classic tragedy. But he is

also in love: with a woman as highly idealised as himself, in a union reminiscent of (but more powerful than) Kipling’s "The Brushwood Boy." Here, perhaps, credulity is strained too far; but this is a matter for subjective judgment. It is fashionable to minimise romantic love; to denigrate the senses; and to dismiss ecstasy as adolescent. It is perhaps only because I do not share these notions that I still admire Hemingway’s early novels; and, for much the same reasons, I consider Occasion of Glory better even than Fiesta. Autumn Term, by way of contrast, is written in a minor key. The elderly widow of the owner of a preparatory school tries to break her contract with it; but she cannot escape the entanglements that come from responsibility, especially towards a young delinquent who suffers from the change in management. She does not want to "interfere," but she does; and it is clear that she will never break away to easy retirement. Joan Whitty is gentle, urbane, mature, kindly but unsentimental; and she has a wealth of sound, but un-text-bookish knowledge of small boys at boarding school. Hearts break so easily away from home. Read this book before you send your youngster off.

Anton

Vogt