THREE BY WOMEN
THE TWELVE PICTURES, by Edith Simon; Cassell, English price 15/-; ROYAL ROAD TO FOTHERINGAY, by Jean Plaidy; Robert Hale, English price 12/6; THE LILAC CAPRICE, by Alberta Murphy; Jonathan Cape, English price 13/6. | {1STORICO-MYTHOLOGICAL is a shocking word to describe a book, but it’s the only one big enough to fit the gigantic tapestry of fact and fable Edith Simon has woven in The Twelve Pictures. She has taken the stock heroes of the Nibelungenlied and turned them magnificently into human beings, and she has also found a plausible explanation of the discrepancies between what the myths say about the Volsungs, the Burgundians and the Huns, and what history teaches about them. A novel for slow and careful reading. Royal Road to Fotheringay is not quite in the same class, even though it’s more history and less myth. Jean Plaidy has made a very competent and informed attempt to white-wash the sensuality, the self-interest and the weakness of Mary Stuart, leading us with considerable skill from the helpless little girl in the French Court to the helpless old woman at the block at Fotheringay. But somehow her attempt to show the Queen of Scots as a woman who was not responsible for her own mistakes doesn’t quite come off. On the other hand, Alberta Murphy’s The Lilac Caprice is a sardonic and unqualified success. Though what makes it
a success is difficult to say. It’s a novel which defies definition-it’s modern, it’s American, it’s fashionably sordid, and yet it’s as different from others of that type as music is from mud. Probably what makes the difference is that in the conventional muddy novel, everybody is either starkly neurotic or else painfully heroic about their deficiencies, while Miss Murphy’s collection of lame, halt and blind don’t care a hang about themselves. Even when the cellistheroine, Erica, is pushed off a hotel balcony by her crazy mother-in-law to be, it doesn’t seem to be a tragedy, either to her or to anyone else. It’s just one of those things, Miss Murphy implies, that happen to people, and we're content to accept the implication, and. even to be quietly amused by it.
Peter
Cape
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19560831.2.23.2
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 891, 31 August 1956, Page 12
Word count
Tapeke kupu
364THREE BY WOMEN New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 891, 31 August 1956, Page 12
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Material in this publication is protected by copyright.
Are Media Limited has granted permission to the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa to develop and maintain this content online. You can search, browse, print and download for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Are Media Limited for any other use.
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.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
Log in