The Month's New Reading

All who really know the atolls of the Line Islands, and thousands who don’t, got a lot of entertainment out of Pattern of Islands, with which Sir Arthur Grimble, a few years ago, burst into literary fame. (He died a few months ago.)

UPON his knowledge and experi ence of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, where he spent most of a lifetime as an administrative officer, Sir Arthur hung a lot of colourful and romantic stories which paid tribute to his memory, plus the author’s imagination and literary skill: and, as a work of art, Pattern of Islands, deserved the success it achieved.

Now, in the good, old-fashioned way, Sir Arthur comes back to the goldmine with Return to the Islands; and it is just as readable and, in many respects, just as in formative.

For example, he tells how the Banabans of Ocean Island coped with droughts—and the marks on the coconut trees there show a drought approximately every 10 years.

Deep under the phosphate layer of Ocean Island there are miles of twisted passages chambers and corridors and chimneys—and fresh water collects there. When drought comes, the people go into this laby rinth of caves to get water. When the drought gets worse, they go far out over the sea in their canoes, seeking the odd sea-showers, with coconut fronds held upright to catch the falling rain and conduct it into wooden bowls.

“You could count, on the marks on Ocean Island’s oldest palms, six indications of drought. That carried you back 40 years or so. The record could go no further into the past because the seventh drought back from 1924, which happened in the middle 1870’s, wiped out every palm on the island.

“Indeed, it destroyed every plant of any kind except the saltbush and ironwood scrub by the sea. and the deep forest of callophyllum trees on the crest of the island. The forest survived because it had its roots far down in the hidden caves and gal leries where the Banabans, had they but known the way, could have found water in plenty for their need.

“But that supply was discovered half a century later. By then, the phosphate mining operations which revealed the caves were paying the islanders royalties enough to build fine village reservoirs.”

Grimble, having learned the lan guages, took a keen interest in the legends of the Banabans and the Gilbertese and Ellice folk; and thus built up his own theory of the migrations.

Originally, there was a stream from the west, which planted

colonies in these equatorial islands and passed on, “through the 16 Gil bert atolls, through the eight Ellices, past lonely Rotuma, across the empty vastitude beyond, until they came to Savai’i and Upolu, of Samoa. There they and their de scendants stayed for perhaps a thousand years.”

The Banabans and Gilbertese maintained some communication with their kinsmen to the west, but not with the east. Then those Line Islands, between 20 and 30 genera tions ago, were re-invaded by their kinsmen from the east—Samoans who had forgotten that these were their forebears—and the pattern of life changed. The communications between the Line Islanders and the west was broken, permanently.

Interesting—but it adds no more than theory to some of the puzzles of the Polynesian distribution. For example: Why, if the Samoans surged westward in that way, are the Gilbertese so much darker than the Ellice Islanders, and speak a tongue so different?

There are some lively sections which deal with social customs •‘Pleasures of Polygamy”, “Stubborn Virgin”, “Unwanted Monogamy”, and so forth.

Polygamy was an old-established

custom among the Gilbertese a very happy one, apparently. W a well-endowed man took a wifi was entitled to take also, as ondary wives, her sisters cousins. In certain circumstax he could sell off the seconc wives, to wife-seeking neighboc “Monogamy was forced on j Gilbertese by the British law at. turn of the century, when Frr tant missions had been at won the islands for about 50 years,, the local administration fox decade, or less.

“There was no popular denr for it. On the contrary, excen one or two southern islands, mendous pagan majorities clung to the polygamy of their-] cestors, and the strictly contrr system of sex conduct that T with it. But nobody spoke fon pagans. The petition of the tarian minority went through!

London, backed by the Adminisj tion (this must be said in fain to the Colonial Office of the dae and that was abysmally that.”' From which it may be dedl that Grimble, experienced adm:i trator, found little to admire inr Britishers’ interference with ano Gilbertese social customs.

Grimble takes a less tolerant of the ancient practice of Tim Under Tinaba, a husband cc send his wife to the sleeping of his paternal or maternal unu and the uncles returned the o pliment with gifts of land, or oc valuable property.

The British promptly outlss the practice; but Grimble say{ persisted and may still persist..; woman saw no disgrace in proving her wifely obedience, demonstrating her “loving k? ness” within the family circle which is the literal meaning Tinaba.

Sections dealing with conji faithlessness, the tendency to o mit adultery on the Sabbath,,, rights of deceived husbands, filled with bright anecdote and! famous Grimble humour.

The story of a Chinese riot< Ocean Island —some time in ’Twenties, apparently is amusingly. The Chinese and .

Gilbertese labourers were house's adjoining compounds; and loathed each other.

Racially, they are poles apart.d was bad enough that they shr have to work together. When i had to eat and sleep within a yards of each other, trouble do oped.

The Chinese spent months onn cret organisation. They fon three armies, each with a gem armed with a revolver, ofH3 armed with home-made scimiti and soldiers, with iron bars, generalissimo gave the word, they attacked from three directs while the Gilbertese were ha'f their noon meal.

The surprised Gilbertese did run, as was expected. They rail!

thering big stones and fell upon e Chinese like devils. The Chinese ittered, but some were badly hurt The story of how the general imo was tried by a court, and itenced to a year’s hard labour, d what happened thereafter, is e of the book’s most amusing ssages.

Published by John Murray, London. Price, 6 Aust.) : e on a

ountain Top

EW novels bear up well under translation. French fares best; German worst of all. And in s respect, Hans Kades’ second >k, The House Of Crystal , comes worse than his first, The Great nptation.

Vhen a writer ventures forth into foreign field, much depends on translator and a great deal on t. A good plot will make up for i loss of the fine writing and rary nuances that occurred in mother tongue version but sur e translation in battered state. louse Of Crystal is an analytical r el rather than one of clear-cut t and although the translation is >matic enough, the dialogue has off-key unrealism about it —like outsider trying to write Aus lian slang.

'he House of Crystal was built by ler as a retreat, high in the imtains beyond Innsbruck. At the e of this story, however, Austria 5 occupied, and the House of r stal was occupied by French and strian scientists doing research > cosmic rays, amongst other tigs. lecause of its isolation, those who d there inhabited a small world which thoughts turned inwards I idiosyncrasies became more nounced. It is this respect that occupies the writer —rather than murder of one of the scientists h a strange poison, his novel was probably excellent its original German. In English s somewhat below average. üblished by Angus and Robertson. Aus an price, 17/-.)

;ak—No

itter What

HE jacket flap says that this is a light-hearted account of life on a cattle station in the Gulf ntry of Northern Australia —and t is just what it is. hzabeth O’Connor calls her book ak For Breakfast —and there ays was, come flood, drought, h fire, cook or no cook, lizabeth, from civilised New South les, married Danny, who man d huge cattle stations in the far th. When their baby son Robert 5 only three months old they yed farther into the Gulf—which

was also farther into the heat, and farther into the unknown.

The station was called Silver Ridge. There were 1,200 rugged square miles of it running 16,000 head of cattle.

The station house was large, with a lagoon in front (except in the driest dry) ; there were six native house girls—most of whom had numerous offspring at foot; there was a white cook by the name of Mabel, who developed measles and departed as soon as the ‘O’Connor’s moved in. Then, of course, there were the musterers and the station hands, black and white.

The story is mostly an account of coping with this environment—plus the two little sisters who, in the

fullness of the years, came to join Junior.

Elizabeth O’Connor has natural writing ability and with her the leader proceeds from new-chum apprehensions to cheerful accept ance of the hard but rewarding world of the Gulf Country. (Published by Angus and Robertson. Aus tralian price, 17/-.)

Love and a

Stag at Bay

Miss Denise Robins Has

■written 114 novels, as well as countless serials and short stories. She probably has a few million readers—all of them women —and as well as being one of the

ps and stays of circulating urban libraries has no doubt 3e a handsome living out of word duction. . lenise’s latest offering is The )le One—a story about a stag [ a girl and a handsome young ie warden in the Lake country England. The only world we can ik of to describe it is “soppy”— it is quite certain that all her 3 are going to love it. rithout one doubt, Miss Robins , successful writer. And if there anything sensible a critic can as against that, well this one 5 not know it. iblished by Hodder and Stoughton. Aus m price, 15/6.)

sealing Bits About

nous People

HEN a man spends a lifetime in Fleet Street, mostly as a writer on literary and theatre ects, he necessarily meets most he chief figures in the worlds terature, drama and music, and is certain impressions. George Bishop—still on the staff of ion’s Daily Telegraph as literary )r—did those things; and the ome is a well-written diverting My Betters. le is introduced to the more aate side of famous characters >el Coward and Marie Tempest, rles Chaplin and George lard Shaw, James Agate and lius, the Marx Brothers and erset Maugham, and many others d the revealing stories about ; of them lead us into a world is peculiarly London —and a d that rapidly is passing away, r example, about 28 years ago, e was a spectacular literary ; between Shaw and another ?r and critic, named Gordon g, son of Ellen Terry. They bbled about several things—but i especially about the art of :y Irving, and the quality of i Terry. [en Terry and Shaw had been : friends, and the famous jss’ family had been rather itful of the publication of the ite letters between Terry and v. It appears that the news r interviews around which the raged were the work of Bishop; in these memoirs Bishop gives ie background of it all. s can see the common clay in feet of very famous people, ie memoirs are revealing, and sing, and often very informative never malicious. One gets the ■ession that George Bishop has messed much more than he has osed. shop visited Australia as a Press in delegate in 1955, and he ses most of what he saw. But— erhaps the chief shock to the or is that the food, especially

e meat (which is so plentiful that ops and steaks are served for eakfast) is as a rule badly cooked the hotels; and that, generally Baking, the service is shocking. ‘My experience was that the more pensive the hotel the longer one d to wait for meals to be served.

Tt is probably only the visitor to realises this, for there seems be very little entertaining out le the home where, in even the althier households, the lady of the use is invariably the cook, and ;en the parlourmaid as well.”

Published by Heinemann. 31/- Aust.)

ore Blondes and

ark Corrigan

HE structure of a Mark Corrigan novel does not vary. Mark is an American secret service man ;h an unlimited expense account. has an unlimited all ra c n for curvaceous blondes—and ndes for him. He enjoys the un lited devotion of a beautiful retary, who follows him from intry to country, also on a limit s expense account. He stumbles m murders —and, because of his iat hatred of regular “cops”, he :es pleasure in discovering “who i it”, and the outspoken fury the “cops” is part of our enter nment. t sounds very silly—and it is— ; Mark Corrigan’s story-telling lehow holds one—probably be ise it is quick-moving, and in iious and impertinent. Also, it is y sexy. The combination is not to resisted. lis latest, Dumb As They Come, ile somewhat clumsily plotted, is 1 amusing and readable. A blonde murdered; the regular police irge her sister with the crime; i the incorrigible Corrigan proves y are right, yet completely wrong, remarkable denouement.

Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. - Aust.]

Collection of the

d Rhymes

you should attempt to trace the origins of Australia’s old bush songs, ballads and rhymes, you aid be surprised at the big pro •tion that must be regarded as mymous. Perhaps that’s what is be expected, since the ballads of 7 country spring from the people, i long before anyone gets to the nt of realising that a tradition in the making, the names of the thors —and sometimes even the ■ pose of many of the songs—have :n lost. fet if we are to make any effort all to identify the old songs, and

thus learn something more of how or why they came on the scene, surely we have to do it now, for it will become more difficult to do it as time goes on.

In Old Bush Songs, Douglas Stewart and Nancy Keesing have made an improved collection of the old rhymes—improved because it is bigger than “Banjo” Patterson’s col lection of 1905, on which it is based, and because many new histories have been added. Many songs once attributed to Anon, have been linked with their rightful authors.

It is a book that should be on your library shelf. (Published by Angus and Robertson. Aus tralian price, 25/-.)

Not a Very

Good Hotel

fjPHERE appears to be a growing X market lately for historical novels of an Australian or New Zealand background.

Will Lawson’s Mary Smith's Hotel is the latest in the bookshops (although it was published some years ago under another name) and tells the story of Charleston, as an isolated NZ gold boom town of last century. Mary Smith runs the local hostelry, and fate puts Christopher and Mary Black in her hands, thus the material for the novel is born.

The book has two weaknesses. One

is that it is on the market too a after Ruth Park’s One-a-Pea Two-a-Pecker, which was also; novel of NZ gold boom days, which was handled with far nr skill than this one of Lawso Thus this book suffers badly by ci; parison.

The second is that the autlr poor handling of dialogue tends; drive the reader to distraction., times the conversations are rr amateurish, and one has to rem oneself that they come from pen of the man who wrote W' Cobb & Co. was King, and a H list of Pacific and Australian ti and poems. Lawson, no relation Henry, died in Sydney last year (Published by Angus and Robertson, 17/- Aust.)

Green, Refreshing

Leaves

TO look at the jacket of Gn Leaves, by Helen Fowler, would expect to find inside of those little semi-religious wo with a Message, aimed at all tH friends and neighbours in need: moral guidance of some sort.

As it turns out, Green Leaves no particular Message, but it ii refreshing change from many bo of to-day, because its story is meant to be taken too seriousll It tells of a Sydney socias daughter, Joselyn Mathers, who “28 years of age, carefully groonr perfectly poised, of wealthy fan and secure social background,” ; who meets up with an odd charan named Mac and goes off to country with him to run an orchr and an odd collection of childil and an odd assortment of otr< characters.

At the beginning, the reader fif himself picking holes in the st: here and there until he comes realise that it is only meant as bit of fun, and then he settles do! to it.

: is recommended reading for [iders who feel a little fed up. iblished by Angus and Robertson, price Aust.)

Irief

Dral Sea Calling: Lon L.

dss’ publishers seem to have n up listing his previous books be front of the current volume, ainly they must run into some bs by now. This latest of his ,es concerns the area between ; York peninsula and the under ' of Papua, west from the mouth le Fly River, and all the islands Bin. This is the area that he vs well himself and in fashion the story he has dug back into >ry to the time when men first ared north from Sydney Town le unknown north of the Great h Land. jlished by Angus and Robertson. Aus i price, 21/-.)