SPRINGS OF BEHAVIOUR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 15

SPRINGS OF BEHAVIOUR

THE DAY THE MONEY STOPPED, by Brendan Gill; Victor Gollancz, English price 12/6, THE DAY OF MISJUDGMENT, by Bernard MacLaren; Victor Gollancz, English Price 15/-. THE KIND YOUNG MAN, by Mary Hacker; Jonathan Cape, English price 15/-. THE ROUND VOYAGE, by John Rowan Wilson; William Heinemann, English price 15/-. BEEFY JONES, by E. L. Malpass; Longmans, Green and Co., English price 15/-. HE DAY THE MONEY STOPPED is easily the best and most interesting of these novels. Brendan Gill’s equipment for this short journey into the land of love and hate is the best kind of New Yorker laconicism, strict adherence to the unities, and a penetrating insight into the springs of human behaviour. Conducted almost entirely in excellently contrived dialogue, the story is the basically simple one of ne’er-do-well Charlie, wry romantic and philosopher, who spends a Spring morning visiting his respectable businessman brother to dun him for some of the family cash. The tone never falters, the tension never slackens. Mr Gill has a real and distinctive talent. The Day of Misjudgment, by Bernard MacLaren, is unusual, vigorous, and for much of its length it holds the attention. On Judgment Day, 2033, brought about by the XYZ bomb, the dead of all the ages congregate, United Nations | refugee camp style, in the Vale of Jehosophat. Abelard debates with Bertrand Russell on the camp TV, Crusaders refuse to queue, and throughout there is plenty of robust satire on our present

mad world. It would have been better entertainment if the pill had been a little smaller. One of the difficulties confronting the woman who writes a novel in which the chief characters are men, is making the imaginative change of sex. Mary Hacket’s The Kind Young Man is about a group of Cambridge undergraduates who take a small boat to the Mediterranean to carry out oceanographic research. Among them-are Oliver, searching for the man who caused his sister’s suicide, and Cary, whose strength of character, and to me rather abstract virtues, give him an extraordinary ascendancy over his fellows. Miss Hacker fails to make the relationships of these young men convincing, largely because of her inability to get inside the male skin. The Round Voyage takes place on a different sort of sea, The liner Cape York, beset by a mutinous crew, a sultry widow plus hangers on, a Deputy Purser engaged in smuggling, and the beautiful Julia Raymond, makes an eventful passage from Sydney to London. This might not happen to you. The characters are well enough drawn to make one regret sometimes that their adventures are so incredible. "Beefy Jones," professional moron, is a member of a gang of small-time crooks who inhabit the disused loft of the local church hall. The decision of the Vicar to demolish the hall throws the gang into confusion, and forms the excuse for a series of unbelievably maudlin escapades, described in facetious detail by Mr Malpass. I won’t disclose the endine. To be quite honest I didn’t get

that far. —

William R.

Roff