This Month 's New Reading

(Conducted by the Assistant Editor)

WITH the approach of the gift giving season, there has been a mild spate of books this month —and for once, all of them in their various ways, readable.

No matter what the literary tastes of your family and friends you should be able to manage something to suit from amongst this collec tion : Journey by Junk, by Willard Price. Published by Heinemann Ltd., Australian price 25/-.

The Romance of the Great Barrier Reef, by Frank Reid. Published by Angus and Robertson; Australian price 22/6.

The Lady of Arlington, by Harnett T. Kane. Published by Peter Davies Ltd.; Australian price 15/6.

The Toll-Gate, by Georgette Heyer. Published by Heinemann; Australian price 12/6.

Who Wanders Alone, by Peter Pinney. Published by Angus and Robertson; Australian price 21/-.

Too Dead to Run, by Jason Manor.

Published by Seeker and Warburg, Australian price 12/-.

Death of a Lake, by Arthur Upfield, published by Heinemann, Australian price, 12/-. (This book will be reviewed in November). ☆ With a little more co-operation from publishers, we might have re ceived Price’s Journey by Junk be fore Michener’s Sayonara (reviewed last month). They complement each other but appreciation of Sayonara may have been deeper if the solid background of Price had already been absorbed.

Price and his wife went to Japan to see whether MacArthur’s 20th century miracle —i.e., Japan’s over night acceptance of democracy— was as all-embracing as the Gen

eral believed it was; and whett it was likely to stick.

For their investigations, t ] Prices choose the Inland Sea a hired a Japanese fishing junk, owner and his two uncles to h( in their quest. The book, thereto serves two purposes—it is a tra' story about a region that has € ceeding charm if only one-quar of what the author says is tr And it provides a penetrating stu on the Japan of to-day and what likely to be the Japan of the futu Like Michener, Price is appre ative of the land and its peo{ Unlike MacArthur, he does not 1 lieve that the Japanese have be “democratised.”

Not that the ordinary Japan are at fault: after the surrem and in the early days of the Occuj tion they embraced democracy what they took to be democrac; with a fanatical fervour peculia Japanese. But as the years sped this new religion did not seem work out according to the Ji anse book. The leaders of 1 Occupation were frequently pnr to have feet of clay; the measu they introduced, tried and pro l in the Western world, often w contrary to ingrained Japan custom and culture; the great “ forms” (such as land reform) f quently left the people it was i signed to assist worse off than fore. In recent years the tende] has therefore been to abandon rm of the much-acclaimed innovati of democracy and for the coun to revert to many of the recer decried institutions of the past, u power again held tightly in hands of the few.

At the same time, there is : other problem—the growth of Cc munism, a power with more vi than the wishful-thinkers wo have us believe, and tied closely with this, the rising flood of popi tion coupled with the loss of Japj overseas territories, her lack of ] materials and a world fear of insistent drive for overseas mark The available arable soil of Ja] will not support the present J anese population, which is grow at the rate of 2 million per y» What is the answer?

This book is interesting, en taining—and thought-provoking. ☆ The 1,200 miles of the G: Barrier Reef stretch along t Queensland coast from the regioi the Tropic of Capricorn to the of the Continent. The reef counted among the wonders of world, the happy-hunting groi for scientists and sight-seers, as well, it and the seas within without, its innumerable islands

islets, have been a road to a venture and tragedy and thus ha provided bounteous material for t story-teller.

Frank Reid, with The Romance the Great Barrier Reef, is possil the first to collect these stories wit in one book. Most of them ha been told before, many times, I they lose none of their virtue 1 that.

Here are the stories of early shi wrecks and castaways; of sunk galleons and buried treasure; cannibals and unfortunate wh women who were forced to live w. the aborigines. Here is the story the castaway Chinamen of Ros Island, who allegedly were treat as “store” cattle by the mei hungry Louisiade Archipela natives; here is Nicholas the Gre and many others which have becoi part of the legends of Papua the days when that Territory v regarded as a sort of outer subi of North Queensland.

There are stories of pearlshi beche-de-mer and trochus fishii and founding of the Jardine dynai when Frank married his Same princess, of the Malietoa family, w had arrived in Northern Austra with a party of missionaries. S died when well into her eighties a is buried at Somerset.

Finally, there is the story of t Quetta, which struck an uncharl rock near the eastern approach Torres Strait on February 23, 18 The ship sank in a matter minutes; of the 280 people board, 173 perished.

Among the survivors was years-old Emily, daughter of T Dyson Lacy, a station-owner n( Mackay. She was an exceptiona strong swimmer, and with br periods when she clung to ra which drifted her way, swam fr< 9 p.m. on a Friday until 8 a.m.

Sunday—the last period for hours with no assistance at al when she was picked up by t Albatross.

A year later she went to Engla to finish her education and th< met and married Mr. Stand Hore, a barrister. He became aic de-camp to the Governor of T: mania and later they went Papua, where Mr. Hore was, for short time, Resident Magistra Mrs. Hore died only recently Bowral, NSW. Mr. Dyson Ho: Lacy, a well known planter of N Guinea, is her son.

This book has innumerable as; ciations for those who dwell in t SW Pacific: a “must” for collect' of books about this region. ☆ t IT is a remarkable fact that all the books written about 1 American civil war, compa tively few have been written fn the point of view of the Norths (and winning side). The wiles a; craft of the writers seem to be k;.

>r the cause of the Confederacy— laybe because of the lingering amour of the Deep South; per ips because lost causes make better ory material.

If your knowledge of American story is dim and you have hither believed that Robert E. Lee was e name of a Mississippi steam iat. Lady of Arlington will put you fht. It concerns Lee, the General, id his wife, Mary.

When the fateful year of 1861 me, Lee, a West Point graduate, is offered the leadership of the >rthern army; he chose instead to ht for the South as the General Virginia’s forces Ihe General—at least according this version—was one of the few utherners w r ho had no delusions to the improbability of his side nging the war to a successful iclusion.

According to the Southern creed, ‘ryone of European blood South the Mason-Dixon Line was a itleman; all those above it were :. As it was inconceivable that itlemen could be beaten by those lesser birth, the war was as >d as won. The surprising thing that, with most of the material vantages, the Union should have :en four weary years to prove X the Southerners could be so mg. It says much for the spirit the South, if not for the leaders the northern forces. lost of the action is seen ough the eyes of Mary, and Lee

is presented in a sympathetic light as a man of outstanding integrity a great soldier, a devoted father and husband. As with most novels based on real people and facts, there is a certain lack of intimacy with the people it concerns—in what should be some of the more emotional parts of the story one is asked to take much for granted in stead of sharing with the char acters the mental conflicts and re actions that must have beset them

Nothing much can be said about of th? „ an / stab lished writer of the calibre of Georgette Hever of course, that it is up* to standard and will be accented eagerly by her fans. accepted d f oes^ ot Pretend to be pro found or to discuss weighty matters of history: but she has made the period novel—frequently so tedious popular, and her admirers will not be disappointed in the latest. The Tod Gate contains the regulation number of Dukes, Earls, lowly Knights, low and high-born villains,

md dashing damsels of spirit but, tlas, no banking account.

This one also has a toll-gate, left n charge of an urchin whose father, he gate-keeper, has mysteriously isappeared. A Captain of Dragoon Juards befriends the urchin and ut of a sense of adventure tem orarily takes on the job of gate eeper. He remains on when he ights the heroine, a junoesque reature, grand-daughter of the im overished squire.

There is considerable skulduggery i the local shrubbery and in a idden underground cavern but all le mysteries are successfully solved id there is the usual happy ending. ☆ T was something of a misnomer to call Peter Pinney’s second book Who Travels Alone. On w stretches of his journey, from e Balkans through the Middle ist to North Africa and to Kenya, he without an attendant lass. 5 shares their beds or their sleep

g-bags impartially.

He carries all his possessions in a •ing bag. Never has more than a tv pennies to jingle; is in per tual visa trouble. His travels, ?refore, are not at the tourist level d consist mainly of running en imters with those who live at the vest level anywhere from Zagreb Zanzibar.

People, however, are kind at these

levels and when they are not, he works—bill-posting in a political campaign in Trieste; selling baked corn-cobs or editing a paper in Athens, breaking stones somewhere else. When pressed, he describes himself as a student— which de scription covers many sins in that part of the world.

It is life in which (according to the author, anyway) wine is more important than food; but which, one suspects, is a great deal more pleasant to read about than experi- F£ c^ pa J ticularl y if y° u are past that first flush of youth when un certainty, dirty food, vermin-in fested beds, or a night or two under a hedge are no longer “glamorous.”

The book has not the exuberance one might expect—the author seems to have turned what might be youthful adventure into a vocation and one is left divided in opinion as to whether he does these fool things from some compelling urge of youth—or merely to be able to write a travel book about them Similarly a group of Australian girls he met in Greece were un decided whether he was a bum a bludger—or a battler.

However, the book itself with its straight-forward, surprised-at-noth mg style and its excursions into the back-alleys and by-ways untrod by the tourist, is good entertainment.

Peter Pinney, bane of stuffed shirts and frustrater of Consuls, is the grand-son of Sir Hubert Murray, of Papua; son of a former Admin

istrator of Norfolk Island. Perhans fhpri? V6IS an i d method °f same are,

famfly traditSn natUral reaction t 0

☆ Too Dead To Run is typical American thriller fare, all built on a plan slightly larger than life— or so we hope. It’s certain that all