Parenthood Plus
p. 86 · Read in the full issue
This Month’S
Only Reading
SINCE the Christmas rush, book publishers have been hibernat ing somewhere, nursing them selves back to full strength. Con sequently, this has been a lean month for book reviewers: and for readers.
Our only offering (Bread to the Wise, by Barbara Goolden), cannot be expected to take up all the slack.
This is a story that begins as though it were going to be brilliant, but mid-way changes its mind and comes perilously close to mawkish sentimentality.
This is the story of Judy, aged 11. and her mother Amice, a gay young divorcee, and Karin Alfriston, a jenny-wren person who shares their London flat. Karin falls in love with Murray Romford, who is married to a career-woman who had no time (or inclination) to have children. Judy is precocious and sometimes amusing and is presented as a problem child bordering on a nervous breakdown because of the unsatisfactory manner in which she lives —in a "broken home” as the popular newspapers have it. The situations with which Judy is con fronted are real enough, and common enough: what the author does not allow for is the natural resilience and toughness of the human child.
Karin and Murray understood Judy’s problems because they are child-minded and child-mmded ness is the underlying theme of the story.
Both believe that the ultimate fulfilment of life is to have children.
But Karen can’t, because she has no husband; and Murray can’t because his wife is a non-starter in the maternal stakes. Furthermore, she refuses to divorce him.
After much beating around the bush —during which time Murray develops a nauseous habit of asking all and sundry, like a neurotic woman, whether they think he is fit for parenthood or will make a good father—they decided to set up an establishment together for the pur pose of having children. On tms note the story ends.
It can scarcely be said that the writer, having satisfactorily made her point about the effect of in security on Judy, is consistent when she allows the hero and heroine to embark on a course that is likely to produce even worse problems *or their offspring to face. Neither Karin or Murray hide their lights under a bushel in going about this business; and with a legal wife like the career-woman in the background, life for the de facto Mrs. Romford is not likely to be unalloyed joy.
Whether you like this book or not will probably depend upon whether you think children are a part of life; or the sole reason for being. (Published by Heinemann; Australian price 17/-.)