KIND HEARTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 914, 15 February 1957, Page 13

KIND HEARTS

THE DRUMS GO BANG, by Ruth Park and D’Arcy Niland; Angus and Robertson, Australian price 16/-. Two young writers here describe their early struggles-to get published, get known, or merely to keep alive in the thick bush of untracked Sydney. The New Zealander, Ruth Park, married the Australian, D’Arcy Niland, after an acquaintance beginning as a pen-friendship promoted by two nuns who had taught them at their tespective schools. Looking back from the vantage point of achievement, they can afford to make the chronicle of their upward climb suitably uproarious and exploit its abundant humour. Even in the days when he worked on the railway, D’Arcy and Ruth spent all their spare time scribbling, posting off to editors in every State of the Commonwealth, bombarding the radio stations, too. From back country sheep runs where D’Arcy worked with a shearing gang the flow of typescripts went on. Back in Sydney they both continued their dedicated vocation, now as "whole time" free lances, Ruth’s output being much curtailed by the claims of housekeeping in a slum and soon also those of motherhood. The time in Surrey Hills justified itself in the prizewinning The Harp in the South (written in Auckland during a visit to Ruth’s family), but life in "Surrey" and in a seaside resort in winter was tough going, the conditions poor enough to jeopardise the health of the children. The book is preoccupied with their literary fortunes. True, all sorts of quaint human beings peep in; indeed, D’Arcy’s young brother shares nearly all their adventures. Like many skilfully written autobiographies, it astonishes most by what it conceals. Don’t go to this book for rare psychological insights or agonising self-revelations, but rather for its modest record of determination and courage, of a success richly

earned the hard way. Few writers have made such sacrifices in order to write. Few writers have studied their craft with such unromantic common sense.

David

Hall