Fiction
The Romance of a Nose. By Lord Berners. (Constable. 7$. 6d.) A Malayan Tragedy. By Johan Fabricius. (Heinemann. 85.6(1.) Barbarian. By Willard Price. (Heinemann. 13s. 6d.)
The Keys of the Kingdom. By A. J. Cronin. (Gollancz. 9s.) The Romance of a Nose has a theme which would have plea Anatole France. In these days of long, detailed and heavy histou novels this short book, in which the girlhood and early triumphs Cleopatra are recreated for us with a mixture of wit and impud deserves a success.The writing is on the acid side, which refreshing in these days when the aim of so many historical nove seems to be Hollywood and technicolor. Cleopatra had develo we team a nose of monstrous proportions. What chance had other charms against such a frightful handicap? But Cleopatra no intention of relinquishing her ambitions or smoothing the Pa for her enemies. She became learned, achieved eloquence and of movement. The amusing daughter of the bankrupt Ptolemy X came to the throne, which she shared with her ten-year
brother and husband, at the age of seventeen. She had the wit to see that the internal strife in Rome might be used to her own advantage. Her first intrigue, directed against her husband, was a failure and she had to leave Alexandria in a hurry. During the period of exile she visited Doctor Serapion and wonders happened. She had a new nose, slightly curved, such as the Romans admire. And soon Caesar would arrive in Alexandria for a much-needed holiday! A delicious book.
A Malayan Tragedy brings us back to this century, giving us the history of a family who have the misfortune to be half-castes. The author draws his characters boldly and neatly. Boeng, Nonni, Rosa and George had a Dutch grandfather, a sergeant in the East Indian Army. They are brought up and managed by their grandmother, Ma Sarinah. Rosa is a bad lot. George, a weakling, has for mistress a married native woman who despises him. Nonni is young and beautiful ; to her, Boeng, the most forceful of the family, is fanatically devoted. It is this young man's determined pride which wrecks his sister's life. He attacks a young Dutch seaman who is paying her attention. In the scuffle, the Dutchman is killed by another hand. Boeng is held for the murder, but later his innocence is established. On his release he quickly murders an elderly Chinese merchant whose intentions towards his sister are suspect.
The author gives an expert account of life and custom in Java which is very readable, but the whole conception is too slight to carry the conviction of inevitable tragedy. The translation from the Dutch is by the Reniers and is smooth and effective.
In Barbarian, a vivid account is given of the commercial invasion of Japan by traders from the West which followed Commodore Perry's uninvited mission to the Emperor. Japan, as it was after centuries of firm isolation, depicted with its strict and formal codes of behaviour, is contrasted with the Japan of twenty years later, absorbing with astounding rapidity the dangerous knowledge of the West. The author gives the history of young Jonathan Boone, of Oregon, a seaman who played a part in Perry's visit. He returns a few years later as a trader. Boone has married Vivian, a lovely but shallow girl, who accompanies him on the commercial venture. Their ship is burnt maliciously soon after its arrival in harbour. Poor Boone has to start from scratch again, much to his wife's disgust. After a time she leaves him ; Tora, a daughter of the samurai, takes her place. The end is tragedy. In spite of his success with the historical background, the author makes little effect with his major characters who for all their adventures remain pasteboard figures.
The methods of characterisation in The Keys of the Kingdom are again rather woolly and unconvincing. Saints in fiction are seldom satisfactory, and Father Francis Chisholm, of whom a full-length portrait is given, proves no exception to the rule. The book opens in the autumn of 1938 when he is an old man: " . . empty and used up, unwanted by God or man." A jump backward in time of sixty years is made, so that we can follow the priest through the years of pilgrimage till the point at which we left him is again reached. The son of a Catholic fisherman, orphaned at an early age, he goes through many vicissitudes before going to China as a missionary. His trials and triumphs there takç. up more than half the novel.
A minor character brutally informs Fr. Chisholm's ward, a young boy, that he will be sent to an orphanage: "He could not have believed himself capable of such sadism. But that very cruelty had purged the darkness from his soul." Dear! Dear! Dear! And on the last page but one ; though, of course, it all comes right in time
for the fade out! JOHN HAMPSON.
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