LOVE AND ADVENTURE
~ LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT, by Naomi Royde Smith: Robert Hale, price 10/6, CLOWN. OF THE GODS, by Agatha Young; Robert Hale, English price 12/6. THE LAST RUN_ SOUTH, by Robin Hiscock; Longmans, English price 12/6. TS really should have more sense of responsibility. Before reading these three books I believed in love at first sight, in the right of the artist to be unconfined by the normal moralistic canon, ahd in adventure being its own reward. Now I just believe the one about adventure, In Love at First Sight Naomi Royde Smith has forsaken the art of the novel for the art of the novelette, thus providing an answer to those who wonder where we shall find a successor to Ruby M. Ayres. The business of covering the love affairs and backgrounds of three separate generations in 191 pages seems | to have denied Miss Royce Smith the leisure to display her~ usual literary gifts of grace, wit and subtlety. Agatha Young, author of Clown of the Gods, has been unwise, I felt, in allowing the fictional career of her ‘hero, Giovanni Cenci, to bear too close a resemblance to that of Nijinsky. The parallelism is taunting rather than haunting, and we readers feel somehow justified in denying to Cenci (the cad!) the sympathy dnd understanding we would not withhold. from the féal Nijinsky. However, bal'etomanes will be prepared to swallow Cenci for the sake of those plentiful helpings of nourishing background material. The Last Run South ig the best of the bunch, an exciting yarn of adventure and intrigue in a revolution-primed Central American port. Young author Robin Hiscock seems to set full steam ahead to become Britain’s B. Traven.
M.
B.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19560817.2.25.6
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 889, 17 August 1956, Page 16
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285LOVE AND ADVENTURE New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 889, 17 August 1956, Page 16
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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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