Anne Chisholm
A remarkable exchange of letters, A Noble Combat (edited by Klemens von Klemper- er, Clarendon Press, £19.50), the corres- pondence (1932-9) of Sheila Grant Duff, a fiercely anti-Nazi British journalist, and Adam von Trott, the brilliant, earnest young German who was executed in 1944 for his part in the plot to kill Hitler, is far more than a private love story or a poig- nant footnote to history. In the painful destruction of one significant friendship, the crushing weight of public events on private feelings at that time is exposed, and the complexity of idealistic Anglo-German relationships in the 1930s is illuminated.
As a variation on the themes of old age, pain, pleasure and memory, written with electrifying energy and economy, Patrick White's 60-page novella, Three Uneasy Pieces (Cape, £7.95), was the most exhilar- ating piece of prose of the year. For a solid, absorbing, deceptively easy read, Barbara Vine's latest psychological thriller, House of Stairs (Viking, £11.95), was as good as its predecessors; a skilful analysis of the recent past as well as of the nature of wickedness, consciously Jamesian in ambi- tion and impact.
The disappointment of the year for me was Alison Lurie's The Truth about Lorin Jones (Michael Joseph, £11.95). Her usual subtle irony was marred by a witless and unconvincing biographer-heroine and an over-tidy plot.
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