The Months New Reading

With Judy Tudor

This is the season of the book reviewers’ discontent.

Overseas publishers’ mid-winter break catches up with the South Pacific at this time of the year, and the offerings this month are scarce and in quality unexceptional, if, in context, something of a weird lot.

IF the half-dozen that have come in were received amongst the normal intake they would have found their correct level. Isolated by their paucity of numbers they strike an almost uniform level of off-beat reading—and in effect produce a feeling of having lived for a month on a straight diet of something like asparagus.

Wild Life

In Guiana

In the last couple of years we have had several novels from African or West Indian authors.

Jan Carew (The Wild Coast ) who has the same sort of racial back ground (he comes from British Guiana), differs from most of these in that he writes completely with out aggressive self-consciousness.

Carew is of mixed Negro, Dutch, Indian and Portuguese descent, and by nationality is British.

To all those other international irons-in-the-fire he can add educa tion in the United States, some years in France aad Holland, and new residence in the United King dom. , .

He has tried his hand at being a journalist, a steel-worker, a painter, a customs officer, a broad caster and an actor (under the management of Sir Laurence Olivier).

The Wild Coast is his second novel, and either in spite of or be cause of his chequered career, is about British Guiana. More par ticularly it is about Hector Brad shaw, son of the wealthy owner of the Big House, but in whose veins runs also the blood of slave an cestors Hector was brought up by his old Negro guardian, a matriarch of a v/oman, universally known as Sister.

It is Sister who sees that he keeps his end up and remains a cut above the village; that he does his lessons and matriculates: that he wears shoes, and on Sundays, a blue serge suit, to church.

But Hector’s manhood was not achieved through the efforts of Sister alone. Hector’s daily com panions were the peasants who lived so close to the soil and the coastal swamps that they had only a coincidental resemblance to the people who inhabited his books:

and whose thin veneer of professing Christianity only emphasised their fundamental pagan beliefs.

This is not a book about a “problem”—colour, racial, economic or any other. And from an author of Jan Carew’s background, that’s refreshing. (THE WILD COAST. Published by Seeker and Warburg, Ltd. Australian price, 20/-.)

One So Grand Love

r:E best-known cavortings of Louis Quatorze occurred to wards the latter end of his 72-years-long reign, after he had started to build the Palace of Versailles and had removed his Court there. So a slightly dif ferent note is struck by French writer Gerty Colin, who reverses the normal order in telling the story

of one of Louis’ young and innocec loves, before—and as it is saioi the corruption of the Court beggj to eat into his soul.

The French version of tf historical novel, published in IS was Called Un Si Grand Amco which probably fits the case bett c than the title of the English vers:a —Chere Amie. Louis’ ideas friendship, when it came to t point, were elastic.

When Louis XIII died he v succeeded, in 1643, by his son, Leo XIV. The Fourteenth Louis waus minor, so the reins of governmir passed to the Queen MotH Anne, and even more so to I valued adviser Cardinal Mazan who in his turn had succeeos Richelieu, the manipulator affairs in the time of Louis XIII Mazarin was an Italian and brought from Rome the fd Mancini girls, his beautiful as spirited nieces, not so much their own good, but in order ' further the cause Mazarin at Court of the young King.

It was Marie Mancini who came Louis’ “dear friend”, and a time it seemed that she mig as well, become Queen of Franj Politics were too strong for young lovers, however. Louis t married to the Infanta of Spar and Marie was bundled off to Iff. and a marriage to Lorenzo Colom High Constable of Rome, arranjc for her by her uncle.

As part of her dowry, Marie td

th her the promise of eternal endship from the King of ance, and this through the ilence of her marriage, the rigues, mistakes and disasters her life, remained the core of r existence. :t was responsible equally for Limphs and for tragedies, finally Marie had the satisfaction telling Louis, in so many words, jump in one of his Versailles mtains, but in the almost half itury between that occasion and i arrival of the young Mancini ters at the Louvre Palace, history and half a dozen love stories are yed out against a background of i most glittering period of the mch and Italian Courts. 2HERE AMIE. Published by Wm. nemann, Ltd. Australian price 20/-.)

e Relucant

libate

NOTHER period piece this . month —set a century later than Chere Amie, but in sombre 3ct, almost medieval —is Olympia i the Angel, by Roderigo valiero.

Jalta in the 18th century was itinually under attack by pirates m Algeria. The island was ended by the Knights of St. in who were members of a igious order, sworn to celibacy i chastity. although it is difficult to be ibate without being chaste, one y presumably be chaste without ng celibate. Some of the Knights re neither—and this category hided Ramon Josepy Marie slourvilles de Perpignan, whose od was so impossibly pure it nt back 15 generations on both father’s and mother’s sides hout blot on the escutcheon, lis pure blood did not benefit a greatly, until it was too late. > elder brother seemed bent on landering the family fortune, i at five Ramon has been pro sed into the Order, renewing the vs at 15 when he was supposed know his own mind. )n the theory that if you try irything you won’t want it, his ther had insisted that he sleep h her young chambermaid >rtly before taking his final vs, but the girl had wept and mon had found it easy to take profession seriously.

Phis was not the case when he t Olympia, an overblown apolitan beauty in Malta with group of travelling players, /mpia’s profession automatically t her beyond the pale of re ictibility, while to involve him f with a woman of any sort iangered Ramon’s career, rheir surreptitious love-making is pped only when Ramon manages get himself captured by the ates and is sent to slavery in

Algiers. But if his troubles are great, Olympia’s are worse, includ es they do the provision of the Church with an unhappy miracle The lovers are in time reunited, but only after much water has flowed in and out of the Mediter ranean.

(Olympia And The Angel. Published

by Rupert Hart-Davis. Ltd. Australian price, 22/6.)

Take a Deep

Breath With Xavier

AMONGST Australia’s more extra ordinary and eccentric writers can be counted Xavier Herbert, who almost a generation ago, wrote

a tome called Capricornia, and then, apparently, called it a day.

Just recently he has had published a second novel, Seven Emus, which he is careful to explain is not his second effort, but his third. The years between Capricornia and Seven Emus have been spent labour ing on “the great work of my life” called Soldiers’ Women, or Mars, the Moon and Destiny. In this (so far unpublished) he reached maturity— “ Artistically and otherwise”. Or so he says.

The literary style of Seven Emus is as extraordinary as its author.

Herbert eschews most of the devices of more conventional writers but if these eccentricities can be sur mounted, what he has to say is arresting enough. One of his fads is

agraph-long sentence which ry the breathing of an opera Before the reader proceeds he should try one for size, how Herbert describes some the origins of Bronco Jones, t-aboriginal station owner, :he hero of the tale: those who know anything he social set-up in outback a, the idea of a boong’s ever to be classed as a squatter utterly fantastic—as indeed have seemed to the un £ Bronco Jones himself, td his beginnings in a blacks’ lan which there is no place in human existence, even lamp be a part of a town, y in these days of advanced nt in Australia, for the e humpies of boughs and '°me little better structures rded roofing, flattened cans, :s, mother earth the floor, the dining table, the squalor o be seen to be believed, but ot due to anything or any haps, except the fact that ; is bound by the stupidities >tone Age there is no help iderstanding limited by so hat still belongs to the

Briefly—and breathlessly—Seven

Emus is the story of what happenel to part-aborigine who lived happily with his wife, Possum, and his brood of kids, when an adventurer horns in on his good luck, and an anthro pologist arrives to study the local totem.

EMUS Published by Angus and Robertson, Ltd. Australian price, 17/6.)

The War

Underwater

SOMETHING a little more sooth ing to the nerves than the rest pf this month’s books, was a reprint, this time in the Adventure Library, of One of Our Submarines, a popular personal war-time ex perience of a member of the Wavy Navy, Edward Young, Commander,

Dso, Dsc, Rnvr.

The book was first published in 1952 and received general praise from the critics.

Young was among the first of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve to be accepted for service in sub marines in 1940, and later on was one of the first RNVR submarine commanders. He tells how he did not enter the service with any enthusiasm, but because at the time it permitted him to take a course in higher navigation.

He made his first dive in a sub marine with some trepidation but afterwards became sold on this particular branch of the Navy, and felt a great deal safer and happier under the waves than on top of them.

His service took him from Arctic convoy duty to service in the Far East and in the waters north of Australia, and his entertaining and clear style of writing makes this book of interest to both lovers of war stories, and to those who like to read about the sea.

(One Of Our Submarines. Published

by Rupert Har-Davis. Australian price, 15/6.)

Price Among the

U's and Non-U's

STILL complete with baseball-cap and wife Mary, our old ac quaintance Willard Price, has been visiting the British Isles and gives us his views in Innocents in Britain.

It must be difficult, indeed, for an American writer of travel books to produce anything new about the United Kingdom, but Price is an accomplished wringer-outer of last drops of juice from the well-used literary orange. He does well enough, but as travel literature, this book cannot be regarded as coming within the first, or even the second, magnitude.

One of the first things the pair

in England, was to spend ral weeks tracing the Thames i its source—-a well in the Cots l Hills—to where it joins the at Southend. And, this sounds )ry interesting thing to do, if no other reason than because Jems one of the few ways in h, in the United Kingdom, it )ssible to get away from people, i visitor to England from less ilated areas, can fail to be im ;ed by the fact that on an ap ntly uninhabited moor, a of cyclists or hikers can seem r turn up from under a stone, t according to Price, no one right on the banks of the r Thames because of the er of flooding, which is con ;d, lower down, by the system 'Cks. e Prices seem to have had a luil enough time in the upper les. First they walked along big river—because unlike most us streams, it begins in a 3 of water meadows, and not acularly from snow-capped 3 or glaciers or tropical rain ts. >m walking they took to a 3, and from a canoe graduated punt and from that to a 30-ft . cruiser. . Price discusses a number of cts incidental to the journey the Thames and to other s— English food and the Eng language being just two of the subject of food he has a y that the Englishman stuffs 3lf with seven meals a day (a f it consisting of bread and and hot tea), simply as a sub e for central heating in the 3 taking of a cup of tea be ne emerges from bed of a ing is, thinks Price, only a s of fortifying himself before mg in a freezing cold room, arly, the drinking of hot tea hing at night, helps to make 'usiness of getting in between ng sheets more endurable.

On the subject of language his wail is similar to Rex Harrison’s in My Fair Lady. “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?”

To help him in his researches in this department, Price read U and Non-U which Professor Alan Ross of Birmingham University contri buted to Nancy Mitford’s Noblesse Oblige, and wherein the basis of the upper-class Englishman’s su periority is laid bare.

Mr. Price thinks that it is ridicu lous that an Englishman is socially placed as soon as he opens his mouth; that he can never be taken for a blue blood if he says toilet instead of lavatory; or if he is ill instead of sick; or finds something interesting instead of int’resting.

Most Colonials would agree with Price.

But even worse than having been born non-U, is to try to be U if you aren’t. This is called speaking Morris-Oxford English.

(Innocents In Britain Published

by Wm. Heinemann, Ltd. Australian price. 26/-.)