Magic Carpet

There’s plenty of variety in this month’s reading, with some first class work among both fiction and fact. And as usual there are the also-rans.

Story With Something

To Say

DRING Back The Singing, by Eng lish novelist Stella Morton, is another example of the dangers of judging a book by its dust jacket. The rather shoddy jacket used here implies that the book might be one of those cheap lend ing-library romances without a line of original thought in it. But it isn’t so.

This story of the gradual break-up of a marriage, and a family, because each parent is pre-occupied with a separate career, is done with great sensitivity and understanding. What author Morton has to say is very real, and her narrative powers are such that the result is a book that is highly satisfying, whether viewed as an accurate piece of reportage on life, or as a plain piece of story telling.

Clare and Hugh Eagleton have a huge and beautiful home, servants, several cars—and four young chil dren who have everything they want except parental love. Hugh Eagle ton is a horticulturist in a big way —the largest grower in England. It’s a success he has strived for for many years, but now he has it he is wondering if it is what he really wanted; the early days seemed simpler.

The beautiful Clare is partner of a top-ranking fashion designer who, with her driving force behind him, has reached a peak where he has been invited to design for a Royal Tour. Clare, unlike her husband, cannot see that her career is affect ing the harmony of the home.

The crisis is reached towards the end of the book, and we are left to imagine the final developments for ourselves—and it is better that we should, for there are a hundred ways in which such a recurring problem can work itself out.

There are many ways, too, in which such a problem can develop in the first place, and one of the main ones is stressed by the doctor who explains to Hugh Eagleton: Males we may be. Men we aren’t.

J f we were men we’d have the guts to be heads of our households. We’d have the guts to tell our wives that a f} ome and a mother’s love of our children were the most important things in the world.

We’d have the guts to ksep out women—l don’t mean to earn enough money for them only,

though that’s important, heaven knows, but to keep them satisfied, content. Thousands do. But for the most part they are the so-called ‘little’ men the world doesn’t notice, or if it notices turns up its nose at, because they’re not sensational.

“They’re the ‘little’ men who for the most part live in Acacia Avenue and catch the eight-thirty and help bath the kids when they get home.

The ‘little’ men who go without cigarettes to buy Johnny good strong boots and take the family down to Littlehampton in August.

“They aren’t of any news value, and if the novelists write about them, they scald them with sarcasm or superimpose their own nasty traits on them —I tell you, Eagleton, that they’re nearer manhood than you.”

(Bring Back The Singing. Pub

lished by Hodder and Stoughton. Aus tralian price, 18/9.)

The Sea His

Magic Carpet

THERE was a time, years ago, when anything written of a visit to the South Pacific Islands was sure to find a reading public.

The Islands were unique. Everybody wanted to go there, and all were envious of anybody who did.

One would have thought those days had gone, yet several books we can think of in the last few years have dealt with the South Pacific from no other angle than that the authors happened to go there, and all have done tolerably well in the bookshops. The authors have relied on a readable style of writing, and on the fact that there is still apparently a reading public for the trivia and the routine of Islands’ life.

Peter Padfield is the latest of the writers who have nothing of special interest to say about the South Pacific, but insist on saying it in book form. And no doubt his book, The Sea Is a Magic Carpet, will have its 1 public, although we think this will be more because of its earlier chapters, than its final ones on the South Pacific.

Padfield is a young Merchant Navy officer who suddenly decided he wanted to get away from the comfort of the big ships (he was with P & O, in the Strathmore) and applied for, and was given, a chance to sail in the Mayflower II when she crossed the Atlantic under Alan Villiers in 1957.

In the first chapters he tells little of the story of that voyage Plymouth, illustrated with some his own not-terribly-good sketch but having got that off his ch« he takes the reader on a rout; voyage to Australia on the P & steamer Bendigo ; on a voyage fr England to New Zealand to deli a tug; and on a holiday visit to 1 Solomons, during which he he search for the missing Melanesi lost mysteriously in 1958 (and d ing the search, Padfield ran i BSIP ship Myrtle aground).

Padfield seems a friendly fell with an easy if not expert sty I attributes which, no doubt, A.

Villiers recognised when he si gested to Padfield that he sho write this book. We would hs thought ourselves that what Padfi has to say would have made a bet series of articles than a book, 1 we wish him luck with it. (THE SEA IS A MAGIC CARPET. F lished by Peter Davis, Ltd. Austra: price, 22/6.)

Picture Record of Old

New Caledonia

BEFORE the war, when I f went to New Caledonia, I for a dreamy and dilapidated isla. visited by few people, completely the grip of the Nickel Company s the great business houses, nota Maison Ballande. Yet it was easy become captivated by the beauty the country and interested in wl remained of the old life and trai tion among the hospitable natn Then the war came, and one s with regret the Americans—few whom ever took more than a sup ficial interest in the place—dem ing the countryside of its links w. the past, old carvings, weapons, g so on. In giant crates these w shipped off to the USA, generally l officers. (“What’s happened to th old totems?” one would ask at native village. The reply was variably the same—“ The America took them”.) The French Caledonians let th things go because the dollar r bringing them unanticipated weal and few were interested enough* their island to care about preserve its relics of the past.

Today there is little excuse the islanders, how ever occupied tl; may be with politics, not know* something of the past. The W 1 ings of grand old Professor Le<f hardt, and of Baudoux, Maria and other excellent writers, hi put Caledonian literature on map. One of the most knowledf able men on the island’s history day is Maurice Lenormand, Cs donian deputy in Paris.

In France the indefatigable Mai Father Patrick O’Reilly has be publishing year after year records of Caledonian and Hf ridean men and books, all ino

usable to the future historian, nh him as its secretary, the New edonian Centenary Committee , since 1953, also come out with uccession of first rate books. We se Mariotti’s Centenary book, as Person’s la Nouvelle Caledonie and the Geography of 0 Caledonia by Faive, Poirier and hthier. ihe latest—unfortunately it is to Uhe last—book to be issued under committee’s sponsorship, evokes colony in a particularly suc btful way, in nearly 100 pages of z.ures culled from all sources ise the days of the discovery of island by Captain Cook in 1774. ;; is wonderful to have this >;orial record under one cover, and congratulates the compilers, irick O’Reilly and Jean Poirier [professor of Literature at Lyons) the comprehensive nature of ir collection, though a few pic ess from our Mitchell Library ■jht still further have enhanced '■value. lere is a visual documentary of iive village life, costumes, masks .ipons, money, canoes, agriculture, nces, fishing and so on, as seen white navigators and early □nists. xmong the once universal bee )e-like huts of the island it is in vesting to come across the pic ?e of a large, low, rectangular in’s house, very like one I saw at cnbon Island, off New Ireland, ;y the other day. in its latter half the book con ns sketches of incidents in the ; always happy relations between ! indigenes and the white in fers —for instance the clubbing 1 death of lay brother Marmoiton ien the first Catholic mission at Jlade was destroyed in the 1840’s.

Another section is devoted to lumea and its evolution since 10. This includes humorous -toons of social life, and a skit the first nickel boom which ought in amateur as well as pro ssional prospectors. The Noumea the convicts, and of the Com imard deportees is there.

A sketch of the Joubert sugar mill the Dumbea reminds one that 3 Joubert family, which built dney’s St. Malo and operated the me Cove ferry service in Syd y, were also among the biggest udowners in New Caledonia.

And there is a drawing of the ;esent Noumea Town Hall with a minder that it was once the head ;arters of the New Caledonian mk whose crash ruined the ilony for a number of years.

The introduction, “Aspects de la s Traditionelle”, is excellent and vealing. It makes a timely plea at memory of the old native ilture should not be lost in these ;ys when tribal life is fast dis tegrating, when commercialism debasing the old native arts into e making of curios.

But this introduction contains one grave flaw which cannot help irri tating the reader: time and again one is referred to numbered pages for pictures to illustrate the text; but on referring to the pages it is only to find a different set of pic tures —the pictures one hoped to see are usually pages away and one has some difficulty in finding them. For tunately, the pictures are correctly listed in the contents at the end of the book. — L. Friday.

(Nouvelle-Caledonie, Images Et

DOCUMENTS ANCIENS, par Jean Poirier et Patrick O’Reilly. Published by Nouvelles Editions Latines. Paris. French price, 2,500 francs (25 of de Gaulle’s new French francs).

White House Versus

Capitol Hill

POWER politics and ambition in high places combine to weave the theme of Advise and Con sent, a first novel by Allen Drury that has been topping the best seller lists in the USA.

Lengthy (638 pages) but tightly written, it is a compelling and timely book that can be recom mended as an interpretation of modern life in official Washington.

US legislative power is invested by its Constitution in a Congress, consisting of Senate and House of Representatives. The Senate, 100 strong (two from each State), is

entrusted among other things with the power of giving or withholding its “advice and consent” to the confirmation or rejection of major appointments made by the President.

The novel opens with Mr. Pre sident seeking the acceptance of the man he has appointed to be his new Secretary of State. Robert A.

Leffingwell, the nominee, has made enemies, Senators among them, on his way up to his present post of Director of Office of Defence Mobil isation, and it won’t be a unanim ous vote.

A sub-committee of inquiry, chaired by able, young Senator Brigham M. Anderson, hears evid ence that casts some doubt upon Leffingwell’s loyalty—a charge that years earlier he had been a member of a university campus communist cell. Instead of closing its hearings, as expected, with a favourable re port, the sub-committee is recalled by Anderson to investigate further.

For a President to fail to gain confirmation for his cabinet appoint ments is almost unheard of, and there ensues a ruthless political battle between the White House and the Senate.

Believing that what he proposes is in the best interests and welfare of the nation, the President uses all his party influence, all the force of his personality, and all his powers of patronage to compel a decision in his favour. (Over)

Ihe story soon moves to a tremend climax. :orty-years-old author Drury con c3 a tense behind-the-scenes at pphere of realism; and he should I be able to, for he has sat in US Senate Press Gallery fbr past 16 years. ihis is both a powerful and enter -dng novel.

ID VISE AND CONSENT. Published by ms. Australian price, 26/-.)

iSuspense Novel a Bit

art on Suspense

GAME for the Living is a novel of suspense from the hand of Patricia Highsmith, who is a )t-class writer of suspense novels h a difference. Strangers on a in was one of hers. Miss High- Ith always writes with a careful for detail, and a shrewd eye character, and in this her latest Ik is no exception. The facts human nature one learns on way are worth the price of ■Qission.

'et A Game for the Living is not iirely a satisfactory thriller for simple reason that it takes long to warm up. The first jrter of the book (which deals h the murder of an artist named iia, who had men friends she e equals favours to, thus com tating the search for the rderer) could almost be dis ised with. . GAME FOR THE LIVING. Published Heinemann, Ltd. Australian price, .)

aven (Or Something) On

South Sea Island

DINNER, the reliable, self effacing chief clerk of the London firm dealing in Islands iduce, and Mackintosh, the »ttish sailor of good education II strictest morals, hadn’t much

in common, except each was looking for a heaven on earth.

They both found it —in a South Sea island roughly answering to the description of Tonga’s Tin Can Island, but with pearls instead of coconuts. What happens there is told in A Choice of Heaven, by J.

M. Scott, who wrote a book that was made into a film — Sea Wyf and Biscuit —but that was a better book than this is.

A Choice of Heaven is not the kind of book likely to find any admirers among Islands readers— but it might well stir romance in the breast of a Cockney lad fed-up with London weather, so long as his idea of what the South Seas are like has been gleaned from Holly wood.

Yet we might be unfair to that lad. Even those looking for sheer pscnnism would most likely be bor°d by this silly novel, which Mr. Scott probably dashed off one morning when he had nothing better to do. (A CHOICE OP HEAVEN. Published by Heinemann, Ltd. Australian price, 18/9.)

Coasts and Characters

Of Cape York

AUSTRALIAN husband-wife writ ing team Coralie and Leslie Rees took a look at the Coasts of Cape York around the north eastern tip of Australia, just below New Guinea, and this bright travel book, liberally sprinkled with characters, is the result.

They started off at Cairns and went right around the Cape to Normanton, at the base of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and although many of the stories of this area have been told before, the Rees’ writing team makes it all sound new.

Of special interest is their report on the activities at Weipa (pro nounced “weepa”) where there is enough bauxite to last the world for 400 years, some say. Nobody took any real notice of the reddish gravel until 1955, although Matthew

Flinders had marked the “low reddish cliffs” in 1802. Fifty years ago the bauxite was reported on and then forgotten, for nobody wanted it.

New Guinea hydro-power may yet be used to process the material into aluminium, and the coasts of Cape York may yet become as famous as the oil wells of Texas. (COASTS OF CAPE YORK. Published by Angus and Robertson Australian price, 27/6.)

African Mission

That Failed

WHEN Livingstone emerged from the interior of Africa in 1856, acclaimed as a great explorer and missionary, and with a passion ate, mystical, selfless belief in the future of Africa and in himself as the opener of its gates, the world listened to him, entranced. In triumphal progress through England, Scotland and Ireland he stirred enthusiam for his beliefs of what could be done to open the interior of Africa as a land of promise, a land which needed only white venture and white capital to make it flow with milk and honey.

The highway to the interior, said Livingstone, was the Zambezi, where for several months of the year a large vessel could navigate, enabling the settlers to be supplied and pro duce to be brought out.

In 1857 Livingstone was made the leader of a Zambezi expedition to explore further this scheme, and on his heels followed the Central African Mission, sent by the Church of England and four universities, and led by Charles Frederick Mackenzie, designated the Bishop of Central Africa.

The task of this mission was to make itself self-supporting in Africa, to teach the natives to cultivate and spin cotton, and, through Christian teaching, to destroy the slave trade.

Mackenzie’s Grave tells the tragic story of how that mission failed

and Buka

Masta Ben

j.use it was before its time. The ibezi was no highway to central cca and there was no milk and ey to be found. ret Mackenzie and his friends mot die in vain. Author Owen fcdwick (now Dixie Professor of sesiastical History at Cambridge) the detailed story of the ex jtion and explains its sequel in imple, straight-forward manner t;h adds a great deal to the nna of the events. His book is 65 than an important piece of orical writing—it’s a fascinating V of courage and adventure for I general reader.

MACKENZIE’S GRAVE. Published by eer and Stoughton, Ltd. Australian 37/3.)

iy On The

iback Trail Again

" all the writers of Australian '“outback” books there are few imore popular than Arthur ».eld, a 72-year-old Englishman, i.eld is the creator of the half t e Queenslander, Napoleon saparte, detective, ipfield came to Australia in 1911, did not embark on a literary >er until 1927. His latest (and /) published book, Bony and the ■;7c Virgin is well up to standard. is set in the drought-stricken lack of NSW, where two men been savagely battered to ;h on the desolate sheep station [ld man Downer. The vast, sun jched, sand-swept country reveals clues. But Bony’s uncanny :erstanding of the bush and the ole who live there —both white i and aborigines—leads him lently towards a solution of the ties. r ith professional sureness, Bony overs the strange story behind seemingly simple murders, but tragedy which results from his istigations is not bargained for, II by Detective-Inspector Bona ;e. phill’s characters fit lifelike into faithfully-painted Australian aground—John Downer and son, :, the station-owners; Pointer his artist daughter, Robin, the t-door pastoralists; Nuggetty a, head man of the local abos. his young, educated daughter, zee.

Dny And The Black Virgin. Pub

id by Wm. Heinemann, Ltd. Australian 15/6.)

t in the Local

de-books

lIIS is a not credible portrait of a Colonial Office schoolteacher (male) in Hongkong who falls a voluptuous Eurasian. Anna has -e paid for her services. The con of Hubert Phipps’ desire and his nented sense of guilt slowly leads . into drunken debauchery. Only

the Striking Wind, a typhoon, sets him on the straight and narrow again, with Agnes, his wife, and a young Phipps coming up.

Author Donald Moore, in The Striking Wind, knows the East, and has written half a dozen other novels of racial entanglements in the British pocket communities of Asia, but this one falls short of the target. (THE STRIKING WIND. Published by Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. Australian price, 15/6.)

Getting Away From

It All-UK Style

WHEN his doctor told him to leave the city for his health’s sake, Englishman R. H. Ferry threw up his job, took a tent and a flea-bag and hied to a quiet river valley in the west of Britain.

My River Valley is a delightful account by a naturalist-at-heart of how he got to know the birds and the beasts of the field for a year while he regained his strength. The story is enlivened by the exploits of Carbide, the local poacher supreme, but the main characters are the blackbirds and wrens, the trout and carp, and the otters and rabbits of the valley that taught him again to taste the sweetness of country life. (MY RIVER VALLEY. Published by Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. Australian price, 22/6.)

Corrigan Outsmarts

The Russians

IF Mark Corrigan, US special agent, who carries out an endless series of dangerous assignments, is your cup of tea, then you’ll swallow this one without grimacing; if he isn’t then you will grimace.

Corrigan gets around. His last four thriller-books have had him in Syd ney, Siam, Hawaii and Singapore.

This time it’s Russia —the trend today for the “hardboiled” school of

writers is to show how easy the heavy-handed, bumbled - footed NKVD (secret police) or OO (special police) can be outwitted.

In Girl From Moscow, Corrigan impersonates a Russian refugee, Nicky, who fled the Soviet, via the Underground’s escape route. His mission is to go to Moscow to find and bring out a girl named Katya, who carries in her pretty head a secret worth millions; Formula 77, a cheap substitute for petroleum.

First, Katya is snatched from escape-impossible Lubyanka prison; is caught again in the round-up net, and sent to a guarded, im pregnable OO laboratory to work on Formula 77. So Katya must be spirited from prison again.

How? Well, the guy Corrigan is doubling for had a comely, accom modating girl friend, Julie, and what would be more natural than for the racy Corrigan to take up where Nicky left off. By coincidence, Julie is secretary to the OO Com missar; again, by coincidence, Corrigan, at Julie’s flat on some extra-curricular activity, finds her using as a bookmark three blank OO passes for the laboratory-prison.

So, he borrows the book when he leaves in the morning.

Corrigan and the Underground ring the changes at the laboratory, but Katya comes to grief. But the Formula is not lost. Corrigan comes good in a twist ending and that threepenny gallon of coloured lolly water you’re running your car on now is probably none other than Formula 77. (GIRL FROM MOSCOW. Published by Angus and Robertson. Ltd. Australian price, 17/-.)

What's New in Paper Backs

rpHE selection of paper backs is X getting better and better, with something for everyone. Here is a current list —our copies from William Collins (Overseas) Ltd., Sydney.

A LAMP IS HEAVY, by Sheila Maokay Russell, one of the more successful of that great splurge of book-length anecdotes on hospital nursing which hit the English speaking world a few years ago, and may not be finished even yet. Miss Russell is an American writer on the subject, but the American problems are no different to the English ones. (GREAT PAN).

The Law Of The Streets, By

Auguste Le Breton, is set in the Paris underworld and centres around a couple of young thugs. It’s a realistic thriller, and apparently has lost nothing in being translated from the French. (GREAT

Pan).

OVERDUE, by Francis Clifford, an exciting, fast-moving thriller of a plane crash with four survivors—one of them a murderer. It’s full of suspense, and another story that can be read through at a sitting. (GREAT PAN).

THE WAY BACK, by Vincent Brome, is the true story of Belgian Army doctor, Albert Guerisse, alias Pat O’Leary, who was awarded 27 decorations by seven

nries for his behind-the-Hnes work orld War 11. He was betrayed in underground activities and tortured 3e Gestapo, but survived to take part 3e Korea war and is now living in mm. Reads almost Hue fiction, romended. (GREAT PAN).

OUBLE IN JULY, by Erskine Caldwch, known for “Tobacco Road” and a's Little Acre”. Here is the same > of raw stuff —plenty of basic urges [oppression and lynch talk —but more urges than anything. (GREAT

Cdng Man On A Dolphin, By

t«ny Thorne, is the ribald and light ed story of a man who finds himself ronly male on an island of Italian nn —and good-looking women, at that such as Lucia, “who had the best :: it was something to see her walk ; single step. Margherita’s eyes were congest, and she kept them lowered. >letta had the widest, most magical

. . (Great Pan).

5E Pearl And Burning Light, By

i Steinbeck. Two of his longish short ?s. One, a poignant tale of a fisher ,who found a great pearl that turned iinto every man’s enemy; and the about a circus triangle. (GREAT :G VERSUS CRIME, by Arthur Hol- His handler describes how Rex 111, -of Britain’s CIB police dogs, was ;d to capture criminals. Bex’s record: sarrests”. (GREAT PAN, Illustrated).

IZA CALLAGHAN, by Robert S. Close, sinned to die for a petty crime in in of the 1820’s, Liz Callaghan in [ lusty novel is reprieved from the ws and sent in a squalid prison ship ’Tasmanian convict settlement. Close “Love Me, Sailor”. (GREAT PAN). i»T CITIES, by Leonard Cottrell. An ;bing account of 10 lost cities (in ng Babylon, Ur. Pompeii, and Macchu ju of the Incas) —how they were built, Hived in them and how they were (GREAT PAN, Illustrated).

Mmer Of The Seventeenth

by Ray Lawler. An Australian play lor and setting) that has achieved a lire of prominence at home and over- The “doll” is the kewpie walking that Barney and Roo, canecutters North Queensland, bring down to inrne each year on their five months’ season. (FONTANA, Yellow). (%T FARRAR, by Josephine Tey. With ill briefing, Brat Farrar at 20 found •sy to take the place of a lad, an t identical twin, who disappeared years before. A suspense story,

At Pan).

IRROR STORIES, selected by Herbert llhal. A large section of the public to read about torture, sadistic mon chilling terrors. These 22 stories ted authors of the macabre constitute indish collection of terrifying tales.

Giant, 5/-).

[ROOM IN MOSCOW, by Sally Bel- Factual account of how a young -American girl set out to see Russia the inside. She landed a job in i»w, and the book is a fresh frank t on everyday life in the Soviet ill. Some may recall the author’s r, Cedric Belfrage, a London daily naperman, who did a writing tour of •acific in the 1930’5. (GIANT PAN), LLEY OF GHOSTS is one by the late ited Edgar Wallace—Dr. Andrew Mac does the detective work, scenting out vil that surrounds a murder. (GREAT

E Second Ghost Book. Twenty

rs including L. A. G. Strong and f Spain let go their imaginations on y stories. Entertaining, horrible.

At Pan).

THE SMALL WOMAN is Alan Burgess’ true story of Gladys Aylward, the maid who became a missionary in China. The book inspired the film, “Inn of the Sixth Happiness’’. (GREAT PAN, Illustrated).

Odds Against Tomorrow. William

McGiven, who wrote “Margin of Terror” produces another thriller of the American underworld. Good stuff, very fast. (FONTANA, Yellow).

MOMENT OF DANGER—this Donald McKenzie crime story tells of robbery and violence in a snappy style. Most readable.

(Great Pan).

THE SAINT STEPS IN. Leslie Charteris again, with The Saint involved with a scientist and his daughter. Slower than usual, this one. (GREAT PAN).

The Bride And The Bugatti, By

Nicole de Burton, is a comedy about a honeymoon without money. The Bugatti is a car, if you don’t know. (FONTANA, Yellow).

Furnished For Murder, By Eliza

beth Ferrars. It’s murder galore in a quiet English village. (FONTANA, Yellow).

THE MAN IN CHARGE, by Richard Jessup. A nymphomaniac is murdered, and doesn’t that start some trouble among the social elite of an American town!

First rate. (GREAT PAN).

TO LOVE AND BE WISE is an Inspector Grant mystery by Josephine Tey, which starts when an American photographer is missing from an English village. (GREAT

Pan).

THE DEVIL’S SADDLE, by Norman Fox.

We wondered what had happened to the Westerns lately, but here is a good one of the badlands. (FONTANA, Yellow).

THE NUN’S STORY, by Kathryn Hulme, is the familiar, moving tale of the Belgian girl who became a nun and helped in the

War. (Great Pan).

The Mark Of The Warrior. Paul

Scott puts his British soldiers on locale in India and Burma, where they get In some exciting jungle warfare. Powerful stuff. (GREAT PAN). (Australian prices; Great Pan, 3/9; Pan Giant, 5/-; Pan Major, 7/6. Fontana, 3/9; except where otherwise marked.)