FRAILTY AND STRENGTH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1052, 23 October 1959, Page 14

FRAILTY AND STRENGTH

LIGHT IN SILENCE, by Claude Koch; Victor Gollancz, English price 16/-. RETURN, by Kathrine Talbot; Faber & Faber, English price 15/-. LEOPARD WITH A THIN SKIN, by John Watney; Jonathan Cape, English price 15/-. IGHT IN SILENCE tells of. the struggle of a man with his conscience. He is a member of the Order of St Bardolph which has a House above Niagara Falls. The Prior understands and sustains him: when the Prior dies he comes to doubt his vocation. His contacts with the outside world, especially with a young widow and her children, pull him strongly away from the Order. He leaves, and for a time lies hidden far away. The moral issues are

squarely presented and the story is most skilfully developed: the characters are much more than satisfactory. There is one old Brother, Didymus, a saint, who is vouchsafed a vision; another, like the central character, is resolving doubts far from the monastery, carving figures for a crib and working steadfastly towards peace of mind; there is the new Prior, a good man, but one whose limitations are just those that are most unfortunate. True values can be laid bare in this world, but even here they can be obscured again. The theme of the book is that for neither Community nor individual Brother are they likely to be obscured for ever. Kathrine Talbot’s novel is about a young American who is made welcome in the family of a great man, since deceased, and cuts his teeth on them. They are a strange, undisciplined lot, and his emotional growing-up is unusual. The swiftly changing situations are cleverly handled. Leopard with a Thin Skin is about a man confined in a psychiatric ward, simply, he maintains, for national security reasons and to cover up a shady transaction. It is quite dramatic but chiefly notable for a capable sketch of the man’s rather pathetic

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