"BEAU CLOWN"-AND OTHERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 939, 9 August 1957, Page 17

"BEAU CLOWN"-AND OTHERS

SHADOW OF THE MOON, by M. M. Kaye; Longmans, English price 18/-. BEAU CLOWN, by Berthe Grimault; Andre Deutsch, English price 10/6. GREAT CIRCLE, by Robert Carse; Victor Gollancz; English price 13/6. % EVERYWHERE I ROAM, by Ben Lucien Burman; Longmans, English price 16/-. OF these four novels, M. M. Kaye’s takes the bun for sustained effort-632 pages of cliche-studded romance, with a capital "R," and historical romance at that. Alex Randall, a sahib in the service of a nabob of the East India Company, falls in love with his boss’s wife (even when they were only bespoken). His boss is a drunken lout, a "washermarrer" type who deadens the pain of the white man’s burden with gin and brandy. Like a gossip’s story, this book is full of asides and irrelevancies, but we can be certain that one good thing came out of the Indian MutinyAlex’s boss died and Alex and Winter (short for Winter de Ballesteros, Condesa de los Aguilares) lived happily ever after. However, anything that has all that the heart would desire will sell. Why, even a family tree is included in the price. The author of Beau Clown is also a woman, but had the advantages of being only 14 years-old and almost illiterate. This story is therefore a fresh product of-the experience and imagination of a child. There are no frilly flutters or great loves here. The publishers point out that the only possible comparison is with Daisy Ashford, the writer of The Young Visiters; but the resemblance is slight, and not of much point. Berthe Grimault’s cheerful acceptance of everything life has to offer, whether it be the visits of Negro soldiers to the farm which is the locale of the story (which make her wish she was older), the antics of three escaped lunatics and her dip-

somaniac father, dirt and poverty, hunger and death, is a quality of childhood that is often forgotten, When "The Chopper," a madman with homicidal tendencies, is gored to death by a mysterious white bull which appears hére and there in the story, the children are fascinated, even amused; they wail and moan only because they see the adults doing so. It is a sordid, fantastic tale, but relieved by two things: the beauty of the image of the White Bull, and the unquenchable zest of its amoral author. Woe betide anyone, be he Freudian or not, who dares to explain this book. Let him just read it. ' Great Circle is a rattling good yarn about a New England whaling skipper who leaves his gal in Old Salem, hunts the mighty whale, rounds the Horn, fetches up on a South Sea isle, succumbs for a while to the languor of the tropics, but finally beats around the Horn again to a lusty welcome home. Then he’s away to sea again with his bride safely stowed in the cabin of a brand-new clipper. Thoroughly enjoyable and authentic, and the whaling scenes are superbly done. Ben Lucien Burman, the author of Everywhere I Roam, has been hailed as a "new Mark Twain" according to the notice on the dust jacket; but this tale of a character who searches America for a refugee from juke boxes and the like is fairly well done, although with a flatness and lack of gusto that Mark Twain

never had.

Edmond

Malone