How Could You Do It, Mr Shute?

This Month's New Reading

Conducted by J.T.

LONG, long ago, after pre-bedtime sessions with Red Riding-Hood being eaten by the Wolf in grandma’s clothing, I used to do some classy climbing of the bedroom walls.

Dingbats, it was called in the family circle (all-Australian, you will observe).

This is of small interest—except that I recently had an adult version of the same nocturnal dingbats after a 1 a.m. session with Nevil Shute’s latest work, On the Beach.

What Mr. Shute does to his read ing public in this latest offering makes what the Wolf did to Red Riding-Hood just sissy stuff. I should like to nominate On the Beach as the book of the year least likely to produce any joie de vivre.

Here is an outline: It is 1963. A year before the short war had occurred. It lasted a month, during which time about 5,000 bombs, hydrogen and cobalt, had been dropped in the Northern Hemi sphere.

Who threw the first bomb is a little confused, but as these things

were comparatively cheap at that time (£50,000 a piece) even small

nations had stock-piles. Possibly

Albania started it, by dropping a bomb on Naples. This was followed by a bomb (source unknown) on Tel Aviv. America and Britain then “demonstrated” over Cairo. Egypt “demonstrated” by dropping bombs on London and Washington and thereby disposing of all the politici ans. However, as Egypt had had the forethought to use Russian planes and Russian bombs, it was assumed that it was a Russian job and the Western Powers retaliated by bomb ing Russia. Russia hit back with more bombs, and China came in dropping still more bombs on Russia.

In a month it was over—everyone in the northern hemisphere was dead and the radio-activity, borne by the winds, was slowly creeping south.

At the time the story opens it had reached the latitude of Rockhamp ton-Northern Rhodesia, etc., and it was calculated that within six months the rest of the world would

be out. Melbourne would be the last big city to take the count It can be regarded as lucky that the author came to settle amongst us some years ago and lives near Melbourne. Otherwise, no doubt w wouid have had the atom war in the Southern Hemisphere ana the creeping barrage of radioactivity go ing north-about.

It is likely that a scientist could knock holes in Shute’s theory of sur face winds doing the mischief, but be that as it may, it would be an opinionated person who would assert that we are not storing up some sort of mischief for ourselves with our atom bomb experiments. It is the behaviour of the characters in this story that takes swallowing. (Over)

Shute’s characters are always so abnormally normal as to be almost unbelievable, but this particular set are stoical to the point of absurdity.

Even when the creeping-death is killing off people in Sydney, and is only a few feeks away from Mel bourne, residents of the latter carry on, planning their next year’s gardens, worrying about the children catching measles, spreading fertiliser on the paddocks and generally be having as though life would en dure for ever—then, in the next breath, they speak of the closeness of the end.

Early in the piece, when radiation disease hits North Queensland and began slowly creeping southwards, Queenslanders do not leave in a body and head south. Instead, they stay home to die in their beds of the cholera-like sickness, or take the little cyanide pills that were put on the free-drug list and handed out to all who wanted them “when the time came.”

Mr. Shute was not with us during the Pacific War—but for this infor mation, some of the best property deals in Sydney’s history were made in 1942, when no one would have been surprised to wake up one morning and find a Jap at the bottom of the garden.

These were the days when a water-side property was not con sidered desirable, and hundreds were on the market.

In 1944, I bought a luxury-caravan

from an MP. who in 1942, had fitted it up so that he and his family might join the great trek westward should invasion occur.

Present-generation Australians can give a fair imitation of dumb, driven cattle when it suits them.

But they have not entirely lost initiative, nor have they become such complete fatalists that

they would sit with folded hands waiting for death, having done noth ing more constructive than manu facture adequate supplies of cyanide pills and little red plastic boxes to put them in.

There is a wide streak of the eccentric in friend Shute and it emerges periodically, like a re curring bout of malaria, in some of

his books. Round the Bend and In the Wet were two of this variety.

Most Shute fans could wish that he would stick to good, straight entertainment, like No Highway, or A Town Like Alice, although they are prepared to bear with him when he suffers his own particular spasms of dingbats.

On the Beach is no doubt meant as a message; it would have been a much more effective message if the behaviour of his characters had been more convincing. f (Published by Wm. Heinemann. Australian price, 15/6.)

Bug-Hunting

With Evelyn

ITHE things that Miss Eveleyn Cheesman finds worth while in Things Worth While cover most things animal, vegetable and mineral, particularly when those things occur in the Pacific.

This noted entomologist has been visiting this area since the early 1920’5, and although according to the calendar, Miss Cheesman should be around 76, her last collecting ex pedition was no longer ago than L 955. (PIM, September, 1955, p. 21.)

She came of a family endowed with intelligence but little wealth and was bom at a time when the learned professions, indeed any skilled or academic distinction were denied a woman. In addition, she was never in very robust health. Her dauntless spirit overcame these obstacles and permitted her to live the kind of life she desired.

Bug-hunters, like star-gazers, are above the petty politics of more ordinary mortals, and Miss Chees man’s account of her journeying into strange places makes restful reading. Her collecting is the im portant business; the assorted frenzies of local officials of small moment.

You can, therefore, read her de scriptions of forays into the Gala- £ r l n $ ° ceania - New Guinea or the Hebrides without being called upon t 9 decide whether some poor native is being down-trodden or ex ploited; or whether this group or that is being governed as the heart (or the United Nations) would de sire.

In 30 years of wandering the primitive places of the South Pacific Miss Evelyn found herself in some extraordinary situations which she surmounts without batting one Late Victorian eye-lid. There is one de finition of a “lady” which states that a woman is one if she is not put out of countenance whatever the

Miss Cheesman in jungle-suit.

circumstances in which she finds herself. We 11 say Miss Cheesman graduates in that class with flying CO Q°H U i’ S fu + . .. J . f. had i l J e true scientist’s disdam for red-tape and in one entertainmg snippet describes how she went from Dutch New Guinea to the then Mandated Territory (midthirties). ou . , , , She wished to collect in the Torricelli Mountains (inland from Aitape). She was in the Dutch Territory at the time and to enter the Mandate according to the book she should have gone first to Wewak to go through the formalities, then back on her tracks to Aitape. It was, as she put it, monstrously illogical.

She walked from Vanimo to Aitape, and from there sent two letters to Wewak, both of which remained unanswered.

At the end of two weeks, with the Government official at Aitape showmg much restlessness, she hired some carriers, got to the Torricelli Mountains, built a hut and scent a month collecting. At the end of that time she received a letter demanding that she proceed to Wewak be fined £lOO or return to Dutch

Territory. She had accomplished

what she had gone for so she did the last.

This bnnlr i*

biography °of "a

a lively yet matter-of-fact descrip-

tion of places that are served to ,k these days only in sensational head lines, or as stories with an “angle”and in amongst our stories of atomic horrors of this month, is a refresh mg reminder that the human snirit and the purposeful pursuit of know ledge still amounts to something in this vale of tears bumt; ™ing in /D ... L ' (Published by Hutchinson. London price, 21/-.) -terlmg c -,-9 c e H ua,s NIC mHIS is a storv nf a u I + I f, st ° ry of a man who A 11-™I 1 -™ i! d 80 fast he literally met P „^u! f SS, mm s b * ck: Q^ est For Pa l aro > b y Edward Maxwell.

For sheer fantasy it puts Nevil Shute right back in the kinder -Barten class and to further bolster the cause, the plot is hitched to the world s 5? f ? equation—the good, old the kn ° W ’ 1 wp rfr? L° f , Relativity. tv/t */r d n ?, t P IO P OSe to argue with S3?* on the , subject of The , but quo from a small ° n the subject which says E nstel ?® reasoning was thus (and Smce the of a mov *ng b dy 1]^ cr< r ases as its motion in creases and smce motion is a form energy > then the increased mass

In^hor/'Zer^

has mass. Unquote gV

Tv/r Ho^ ve 3’ Mr - Maxwell says that Mr. Einstein reasoned thatif you take a body and move it fast enough its size will become smaller until aUogether l4 ™^ 6 “ wUI disa PP e “ Perhaps both Mr. Maxwell and our text book are right. You can

prove just about anything with old E = me-.

But let’s crawl upon Mr. Maxwell s

space-ship.

He is a young, wealthy inventor who had designed a plane capable of 8,000 miles per hour. He takes it out on a run one morning and flew through (1), the sound barrier

—Mach 1; (2), the thermal barrier— Mach 2; and (3) the time barrier —which so far hasn’t been given a Mach.

He wakes up to find himself in a remote part of Spain in a peasant’s cottage being coo-ed over

by the peasant’s daughter, Angelita.

Daughter had had a brain injury at birth, cannot speak but cooes and clucks like a bird.

He proceeds to fall in love with daughter but soon is confronted by the extraordinary fact that he is 21

years out of date—it is not May, 1956, on the day he set out in his plane, but May, 1977.

Further research reveals the fact that there has been an atomic war in the meantime—wiping out most of America (migrants from Canada are going to Asia) and all of Europe north of the Pyrenees. Half of the people in the world have been killed and Spain is the centre of the new world.

While these facts are being assimi lated, Angelita dies of the brain injury that she sustained at birth.

Desolate, Maxwell decides to go back through time in an attempt to put things right. This he does by means of his plane—miraculouslv preserved —in a manner that boggles the imagination.

Back in England, back in 1956, Maxwell proceeds to do something about Angelita; as yet still in her mother’s womb, but shortly to be born.

His family, not un-naturally, wish to put him in a home for the mentally ill, but he escapes that and with a friend and an obstetric ian proceeds to Pajaro, where he finds Angelita’s mother in labour with Angelita. The obstetrician gets to work and the child is delivered safely, without brain injury.

Curtain; Maxwell lamenting that most people will not believe him How very right he is—but it just shows what can happen when you go fooling about with high-powered planes. (Pub ished by William Heinemann. Aus tralian price, 13/3.)

Ah You—Ah Me!

WILLIAM Arthur Robinson’s first book, Deep Water and Shoal, is well-known; so was his first ship, Svaap. in his recently pub lished To the Great Southern Sea, the story is of another vessel, Varua and another voyage, 15,000 miles south and east to the tip of South America, north to Panama and home to Tahiti.

The book is well done, interesting; Mr. Robinson writes more like an author than a yachtsman. This may be considered either good or bad, depending on individual preference.

Robinson— who usually refers to himself as “we” and presumably means to include his wife—went to Tahiti first in 1933. War II inter vened and he went back there to live permanently after it, takino Varua with him.

It is here that the Robinson domestic arrangements get consider ably confused—references to “we” continue but by now the reader has no way of knowing whether the pronoun refers to the wife men- HgS? d on i he second Page (circa, 19d2), an d apparently named Florence C.; or to “the exquisite Ah Y ou, aged about 20, who ships off with him on the Great Southern voyage, shares the master’s cabin

m" s d tr^ ferred ‘° “ “ Varua ’ s new For Ah You the voyage was n sort of pre-natal shake-down cruise She went on board with a “modest J; nd six months later arrived in the Canal Zone with a couple of weeks to spare to produce a daughter, who was named Hina Mareva Robinson. If Robinson Wat manied to Ah You we cannot imagine why he does not say so in the beginning instead of coyly skirt ing around the subject. atd%iS e Ta h hla«n and Th K e P ost entertaining parts of are reactions of these people from Tahiti to the world out-

SJj®- Jt 15 recommended reading for those arm-chair escapists who feel that to wander around the world in 0 1l set-up yacht with a beautiful part-Chmese, part-Tahitian girl and J cre ? lslander s, would be next door to Heaven.

For more practical folk there is an appendix giving Varua’s plan sails, maintenance details—and what to do in a rough sea! prke Ubl 22/ e 6) DavieS ' Australian

What Makes a

Hanuabadan Tick

npHE most famous village in Papua- A New Guinea is without doubt Hanuabada, which is situate#

(Continued on Page 109)

almost outside the front gates of Government House and is within the town boundaries of Port Moresby.

It is a guinea to a gooseberry, however, that few if any European residents of Moresby bothered to make a scientific appraisement of the village that lies a squalid but bustling blot on the foreshore.

Therefore, those who take time off to read Cyril S. Belshaw’s book, The Great Village, may find the effort re warding, even interesting—although Moresby residents, as a whole, are not given to reading anything more thought-provoking than Fix and Women’s Weekly.

Mr. Belshaw and his wife lived in Hanuabada for about 12 months in 1950-1951, in true anthropoligical fashion and he is able to produce facts and figures that not only will be a surprise to white Moresbyites, but should supply some admirable ammunition to our critics from India, Guatamala, Costa Rica—to say nothing of Russia.

To be sure, six years have passed since Mr. Belshaw made his observa tions, and progress and improve ments have been made—although outwardly Hanuabada, that erstwhile model village of Mr. Eddie Ward, looks more of a slum than ever.

Mr. Belshaw says that the corru gated iron shacks are probably not

as unhygienic as they look, although they are built almost touching one another with little air circulation between.

During the time the Belshaws were there, there were only five latrines (for a population of about 2,500) At night, few bothered to use them, but used the nearest shelter or the side of a house. Children and the sick urinated through the floor boards of their houses, irrespective of whether there were children playing under the house, or not.

There was one shower-bath pro vided inland and several near the shore, but they were without shelter so that people who used them bathed in their clothes. In addition, due to Moresby water-shortages, the water was frequently cut off, often when it was needed most, after the day’s work was done.

Forty-four gallon drums were pro vided for rubbish, but these were on the road and few people used them, continuing to throw their refuse into the sea where it floated about or was left in the mud when the tide went out. According to Mr. Belshaw’s calculations, 277 Hanuabadans out of 1,000 die before they reach the age of reproduction.

Like most books of its kind, this one probably overdraws the picture —everything cannot be proved with statistics. But there is enough evidence herein to show that the Administration of Papua-New Guinea might be better employed

educating the Hanuabadans to cope with modern life, rather than in try ing to spread government influence m so-far uncontrolled areas where the inhabitants encounter nothing more lethal than their natural en vironment and their ancient cultures.

An interesting book, and one that should be required reading for all Moresby residents. (Published by Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd. UK price, 30/- Stg.)

Making Pacific

History Very Simple

The trouble with some histories of the Pacific is that they are written by longhairs under the impression that plain English is not a language that should be used by anyone with a University education.

So long as they can prove they are erudite, to heck with making themselves understood.

Pacific Peoples, by Lyndsay (re peat Lyndsay) Gardiner, is a very brief history of the Pacific that is different.

It was, written for the juvenile market presumably, yet it can be read with interest by the toughest, most cynical, islands trader —and should be.

Mrs. Gardiner, who is an MA, and might therefore qualify as a long hair, tells her fascinating story in two parts—a history of the earliest native settlers in the Pacific; and the history of the Pacific peoples from the advent of the white man to their domain.

She deals in turn with Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Australia,, and what she has to say makes, it a lot easier to understand where we are headed now. She does this; in only 127 pages; and throws in, a very full index for good measure..

The few blemishes are only of: minor importance in a book that is as handy as this one, but in the: next edition Mrs. Gardiner might like to put Hanuabada back ini Papua (since she rightly chooses toi draw the distinction between Papuai and New Guinea); and correct the P-NG health statistics, and the native population figure (which she twice mentions as being only 300,000) .—SI. (Published by Longmans, Green and Co..

Australian price, 18/9.)

Reviewer in

Amazement

THE title of this piece of persiflage is called Man in a Maze. That makes two of us.

Author is Veronica Henriquesf who has two other novels to hex name and once used to be a reporter If her other two bbjets d’art are any thing like Man in a Maze, then the world hasn’t gained anything sine* she gave up straight reporting.

This is one of those modern books: narrated in almost straight dialogue, and to which one must have re course to the jacket-flap to find oui what it is about. According to th«. jacket-flap, the two characters mee; in Jugoslavia—but there is no othe:; way of knowing.. The opening, chapter goes something like this: “I have to go,” she said.

“In a moment,” he said.

They looked at each other but hi gained no knowledge from the look: ing.

“Who are we?” he asked.

“You don’t know?”

“I forget,” he said, “So please tel; me.”

“Your name is John,” she saio “My name is Olivia.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “What do wv do?” . , .

John is not, as you might suppose suffering from amnesia. Both chan

acters are bothered by the problems of the post-war world and are seek ing valid reasons for their existence.

If this is the sort of moron that inhabits the Northern Hemisphere these days, it is small wonder that writers like Shute and Maxwell write books wiping them all out. In fact, I am thinking of writing one myself, with a particularly nasty fate re served for writers of “contemporary” novels. [ (Published by Seeker and Warburg. Aus tralian price, 17/6.)

The Age

of Adventure

MYSTERY and romance surround most early voyages to unknown lands and this has been the basis for innumerable novels. However, Henrietta Drake-Brockman has used real incidents and real people around which to build The Wicked and the Fair.

Mrs. Drake-Brockman writes con vincingly and, to use an over-worked reviewers’ cliche, powerfully, of the events that preceeded and followed the wreck of the Dutch ship Batavia on Houtman Rocks one light in 1629, but no humour lightens :he gloom of this story.

Hautman Rock s—the Wallabi 3roup—lie offshore, about half-way dong the western coast of Australia.

Phey are in the region where the Dutch East Indies ships, running tast from the Cape of Good Hope, nade an Australian landfall before urning north for Java.

Batavia was one of many ships vhich took this course; one of the lumber who are known to have ome to grief on the inhospitable eefs and shores of the Australian lorth-west. The author has taken he individuals who make up the hip’s complement and from old ocuments and records of court pro eedmgs that followed the disaster, ieced together a story of lust, de ravity and treachery, shot through ere and there by gleams of in -grity and high endeavour. Into tiis last category comes the 1,000 files open-boat voyage from the 'ene of the disaster to Java to get id.

This is a worthwhile contribution ) Australian history—another re finder that had not Australia irned such a barren shoulder to lese early Dutch voyagers, the estiny of this continent, and its olitical history might have been ) very much different. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd istralian price, 22/6.)

Mat's New in

ocket Books

i MONGST numerous reprints in 1 paper-covers issued this month, ine titles in Pan and Fontana

have come to us from William Collins.

THEN A SOLDIER, by Geoffrey Cotterell, an hilarious and often satirical account of army life as seen through the eyes of three reluctant soldiers called up in 1940. A perennial public schoolboy, a self-pitying jazz band pianist and a London East End grocer’s assistant are the three main characters who spend the first three years in the pursuit of com fort and dodging overseas drafts.

The spirit of the thing get them in the end, however, and they become parachutists. (Pan).

Justice At Work, By James

Avery Joyce, tells you how the law

works in England—everything you are likely to want to know from the functions and privileges of judges, to your rights at law in hire purchase deals. The author is him self a Barrister-at-Law. (Great Pan).

Your Baby And You—A Hand

book for mothers covering a baby’s life from conception to its second birthday. It is written by a well known British child welfare specialist, Dr. Winifred de Kok, who is, as well, a television personality. (Great Pan).

The Curve And The Tusk

one of Stuart Cloete’s best books about South Africa dealing with the

old war between men and elephants but, incidentally, describing much of the 20th century scene in the Union and Portuguese East Africa. (Fon tana) .

The Case Of The Dubious

BRIDEGROOM: Earle Stanley Gardner has his Perry Mason bounc ing through this one (with the assistance of Della Street and Paul Drake) to produce a few hours of escape reading. A good pick-me-up for tired businessmen—and women. (Pan).

Tschiffely’S Ride: The Ride

was of 10,000 miles on horseback, from Buenos Aires to Washington, made in the mid-twenties by Aime Tschiffely, a Swiss, on two tough Grille ponies. The ride took 21 years, and the story of it was first pub lished in 1933. However, the ad venture is probably quite unknown to present generation readers who will find the book completely absorbing. (Great Pan).

You’Ll Die In Singapore:

The story of the escape of Charles McCormac and his Australian com panion from the Japs in Singapore, was told briefly by Paul Brickhill in his book, “Escape—or Die’’

McCcrmac’s own story fills in the gaps and provides one of the best stories of its kind to emerge from the Pacific war. (Pan).

Target In Taffeta. By Ben

Benson, well-known thriller writer,

is another Detective-Inspector Paris

story of cops against the American

underworld. (Fontana).

Death And The Sky Above

—an ingenious thriller by Andrew Garve, with an ending that is as surprising as it is exciting. This story would make an excellent film —it is a wonder that J. Arthur nas not got his eye on it already. [Pan).

Reviewed Briefly . . •

Holiday From Life: When

Sacha Carnegie, part-Polish, part scottish, leaves his Guards’ regiment ind decides to take up pig farming, ie gees to a Swedish farm-school to earn all about it. The school-farm vas run by a friend and Sacha magined that he would be treated s a guest. Instead, he is put strictly it pupil level. There follows some imusing and strenuous times for >acha and, for the reader, some in eresting descriptions of the Scan ana vian countries. Why Sacha could lot have learnt about pigs in Scot and, or even England, remains un xplained. (Published by Peter Davies. Australian rice, 18/9.) GO IN BEAUTY: This effort (by Villiam Eastlake), is cowboys and ndians without the cowboys and

not much improved for that. It is written in disarranged syntax that is singularly irritating to read, and is one of those contemporary stories in which this publisher specialises The plot is the temperamental con flict of two brothers who had in herited an Indian trading post and the place played in the lives of them ooth by the wife of one. The story of the Navaho Indians might have been more interesting if Mr. East lake had seen fit to write about it in a more conventional style. (Published by Seeker and Warburg. Aus tralian price, 20/-.)

The Lady And The Unicorn

by Rumer Godden, author of Black Narcissus, is again about India—this time of Calcutta.

The chief characters are half caste, living in sordid conditions in a vacuum between the two worlds. The whole thing is so removed from the average readers’ natural habitat that it all appears to take place in some fifth dimension. It is un likely to appeal to people who have not a wide streak of the meta physical in their make-up. (Published by Peter Davies. Australian price, 15/-.)

The Cruel Lady (By Mark

Corrigan) is another adventure of Mark in Australia—with a side ex cursion to South America—but with all the American crime-b ust e r gimmicks used by this writer. It is

probably true that Australia gets more like the United States every day, but we do not think that it has progressed so far as Master Corrigan would have us believe. We like our crime with a more subtle touch; still, for Mark Corrigan fans, this is the latest. (Published by Angus and Robertson. Aus tralian price, 15/-.)

Families Are Fun: A Light,

amusing story of New Zealand life by Mary Scott which will be suit able for a teenage daughter or for the female adult who does not re quire too much depth in her reading matter. The Standish children have parent trouble—a somewhat irre sponsible father and a beautiful and temperamental mother who lives apart from them. These children prove that the young are more resilient than is supposed, and in stead of growing into a bunch of delinquents they work out a satis factory pattern of life for them selves. (Published by Angus and Robertson. Aus trailan price, 15/-.)