New Novels
LENNOX COOK'S The Lucky Man (Collins, 12s. 6d.), a first DacI, is something it would be pleasant to meet more often—a (mare or less) proletarian novel written without social selfconsciousae,s1 Though it is a story 'about (again, more or less) various soesli layers, as shown in the progress of a publican who wins a footbs.:c pool, it manages remarkably well neither to lose the essence of individual characters in their worldly circumstances, nor to these circumstances ever to become blurred. Mr. Cook's observ"; tion is neat, accurate, and original, and he lias the quality% riJnrf and valuable, of making weighty statements lightly—or rather ,:d giving, somehow, a significant aura to quite trivial remarks ant happenings. His hero, Bob Nicolas, is the kind, woolly, ra11.1,e,: charming landlord of the Lucky Man, a Midlands pub comPel1h, unsuccessfully with television and dance halls. With a nagg111° wife, a son dead from polio and no hope of other children,
leisurely not unhappy existence in which gardening, warmth, comradeship, and in- nocuous occupations like darts and pools take uP his energies, he wins £50,000 out of the blue, His wife takes to social climbing—new hats, tea parties, a psychiatrist, continental holidays; Nicolas takes a mistress and for the first time achieves some passionate (though still gentle and conscience-stricken) happiness. One gets a glimpse of the spiritual chaos brought by unexpected, almost unwanted, Money; by unexpected sophistication; by new standards arbitrarily imposed, without under- standing. One gets equally a glimpse of the dreadful wife's torment in her kind, comradely, unsatisfactory husband, and of the delightful Mistress's delight in his (at last awakened) goodness of heart. I was bored by the final Chapters and unconvinced by the ending, but delighted through most of this unexpected book by the mint flavour of Mr. Cook's humour and style. William Cooper has gone into what, for him, is an odd and rarefied atmosphere in Disquiet and Peace (Macmillan, 15s.)— Edwardian Liberalism on the Cabinet fringes of 1906. And a strange concoction he brews there. There is London high-life, first of all, With balls given by great Liberal hostesses tottering on the edge of bankruptcy; references
to the Duchess of , the 'Hartland House set,' the 'second-best tiara,'- the 'Hartland emeralds'; chats with the PM, grand-scale elopements to Venice, cheating at baccarat, etc. etc. Then there is the relationship between Arnold Brown, a rising young politician, and his melancholic wife Muriel, which appears to be (I hope I haven't got it wrong: Mr. Cooper is wonderfully elliptical and non- committal) a rather stilted variation on the Moravia theme of A-loves-B-too-much,-so-B- ean't-love-A-enough,-so-B-loves (or wants, or runs off with)-C,-who-can't-love-B-enough; and so on. It is written in short, staccato, un- revealing sentences that leave to you the game °f filling in the psychological gaps, with comic ehapter titles and near-comic episodes involv- ing little dogs who share Christian names with Pe Prime Minister's wife, and eye-glasses 'ailing into the soup—which is all puzzling and entertaining and doesn't, to my mind, quite come off.
Alice Acland's A Second Choice (Con- „stable. 15s.) is one of those novels that set You wondering rather ungraciously why they ever came to be written at all, since they don't seem to say much, or matter much, or even to be about anything in patticular. Yet it is all quite readable and agreeable, if you ean summon up enough enthusiasm for a girl called Jane who lives in Chelsea, is nineteen, Works in an antique shop, thinks she's in love With a,married man and when he pushes her e'ff settles instead for the lodger. All the central 'serious' part of this anemic little tale found quite exhaustingly wearisome, but the marginal characters—Jackie and Joe of the antique shop; some countrified twins; Gino, a s and but accurate young Italian—are lively d amusing, and make me hope Miss Acland ,l' aY develop this unexpected and idiosyncratic 'de, of her genuine, but at present rather ,t uitY, talent. A childish but fresh and promising first n()vel is Ruskin Bond's The Room on the Roof (b eutsch, 10s. 6d.), a boy's-eye view of India Written by a seventeen-year-old with remark- rlY sharp senses and an air of wonder that frflan at times lapse ng into archness. Rusty, his r°. is an Alo-Indian boys
escapes
°in a starchy English community into a year
of freedom and Indianisation. Mr. Bond's Indians and their life are attractive; and the sights and smells, the food, the feeling of having Indian instead.of European clothes on, the way it feels to ride four on a single bicycle, the whole physical scene—all these are pre- sented with an observational innocence enlivened by an odd, perhaps fortuitous, stylistic sophistication I found both disconcert- ing and pleasant. Whether Mr. Bond will emerge from his fictional adolescence to write something adult, it is impossible so far to see; but as an essay in the whimsical-atmospheric, this is a creditable piece of work.
Compton Mackenzie's Thin lee (Chatto and Windus, 13s. 6d.) is a rather clinical study, presented through the eyes of an uncompre- hending but not unsympathetic friend, of the progress, through a long and moderately dis- tinguished life, of a homosexual.. The whole thing has too case-book an air about it to make a successful novel, but there are some interesting sidelights on the social aspects of homosexuality and some random reflections. such as a supposition that three-quarters of the male suicides in this country result from homosexual blackmail, which make one, if nothing else, sit up and think.
Youngblood, by John 0. Killens (The Bodley Head, 18s.), is the Deep South novel we have all read often before—no worse, no better: tough, sad, racy, lyrical, making you in turn indignant, amused, and, as the pages drag out beyond the 500-mark, rather weary as well. The Youngbloods are a Negro family in Georgia in the 1920s and early Thirties, living under the shadow of (the girls) rape and (the boys) lynching. Things just go on, year after year : it is all competent and obviously passionately considered, but fails to strike any very passionate response, at least in me.
ISABEL QUTGLY
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