This Month’S New Reading

(Conducted by the Assistant Editor)

Hag Ridden

THIS one is worth the price of admission for its Ascription of a little-written-about part of the world—the Sudan. The action of the novel takes place befioeeri the wars and concerns a group* of Britishers occupied in growing cotton on the irrigated hanks of the Nile.

“Exploiting the natives, it isprob ably called these days, if it still goes on.

However, if you are a Sjoss materialist and do not subscribe to the more things on heaven and earth than were dreamed of in Horatio’s philosophy, you may find the plot hard to swallow.

Magdalen King-Hall has called this novel Hag Khalida, which was •; iso the name of the cottage to which the Cotton Company, in its wisdom, condemned young Tony Warrington and his bride.

A tragedy had occurred in the cottage, and the rest of the Com pany’s cotton planters, and Tony, did not consider that the Company was quite playing cricket by in sisting that the young couple occupy Hag Khalida. They entered a con spiracy that, come what may, “Brenda should not find out”—and having thus created an atmosphere of mystery, Brenda felt impelled to do just that.

In a sense, the novel contains two sto r i e s—that of Brenda, and through Brenda the tragedy of the woman who had previously lived in the house.

The life of tropical suburbanism is well drawn and if some of it is too mystic to be feasible, perhaps the interesting description of the couple’s holiday trek towards the Abyssinian border may compensate. (Published by Peter Davies Ltd., Austra lian price 13/3.)

The Semi-Submerged

One-Twelfth

A NOVEL that, at times, verges on the too-clever; but it is in teresting if only because it deals with ft little-known section of the human family.

This publishing company—which seems to specialise in first novels — has fared somewhat better with Mother Mountain and its author, Hayden Roberts, than with some of its first-fruits. Few people outside of South Africa know anything of the so-called Coloured one-twelfth of that Dominion’s population— apart, perhaps, from a very vague idea of them in relation to African politics.

This is a story of Cape Town

Coloureds —and Coloureds, not as a political entity, but simply as people. Although all the props for a political novel are there, politics come into it not at all —maybe be cause the author went there as a youngster and sees the Coloureds correctly in the niche that the South African Union and God has seen fit to place them —also without sentimentality and heroics.

He portrays them as a not un happy people, limited in outlook, and, for the most part, taking the line of least resistance. If there are some who have burning and not-to-be-denied feelings, nation alistic or otherwise, they have been left out of this story.

The youth Martin comes nearest to the exception, and his trouble could be called more a divine dis-

This month, Judy Tudor is some where is the Lau Islands, Fifi.

content —or so it appears —than any thwarted ambition towards any specific goal. Part of Martin’s trouble is supposed to be that he has had too much education for a Coloured boy. However, the author seems to have had less luck with Martin than his other characters and although one doubtless is sup posed to feel a sympathy for him, he appears merely a weakling, and engenders a desire to give him a good swift kick where it will do most good.

There is nothing particularly up lifting in this book; and if you are predisposed towards the idea that the stratum of society occupied by the Cape Coloured necessarily pro duces shiftlessness, there is little here to prove otherwise. Nonethe less, it has interest—not the least of which is the extraordinary jargon which these people speak. The notorious Australian accent is, by comparison, crystal pure. (Published by Peter Davies Ltd. Austra lian price 15/6.)

Of Days That

Are Gone

A DELIGHTFUL, roguish, enter taining picture of the “fashion able” English world of the 1880- 1914 period is drawn for us by Kate Mary Bruce in The Poodle Room (William Heinemann, 13/3). It is a story concerned with the fortunes and the loves—illicit and otherwise —of three generations of aristocrats, and it shows how the fate of many wealthy and ennobled families be came entangled with the ambitions

and belligerencies of Kaisers ant Hitlers.

A bored young wife, perfume* and pampered and amoral, sinnet in 1890, with 1950 abandon; bon her trusting husband a son wlu obviously was not of the same breei as her other children; and thui created a situation which tool dramatic form among her grandl children, after World War 11.

Kate Mary Bruce is a naturs and charming writer—as is to bt expected of the niece of Somerse Maugham. The Victoria-andf Edward England which she describe never will return; although it maj have lacked bathrooms and motor cars and radio, it was England a the moment of greatest power am influence. When they read a stor like this, older people, lookim around them, experience stron feelings of nostalgia and regret.—E