Armstrong Unto The Fourth Generation

Few writers have successfully overcome the problems inherent in ? “family chronicle” that slops over from one novel to the next. And lomas Armstrong, English marathon writer, has been no more ccessful than most.

the third of his long novels of ie Crowthers and their kin. Sue other’s Marriage, he has now, in bird and fourth generations, ac d so many characters that it is able to take a course in memory ing before even embarking on it. sentially this novel is the story rchie Pilling, a connection of the y, and his attempt to salvage a ;ship which has been stranded le English east coast, and which has unhappily acquired for 00. author Armstrong had left it :hat, plus Archie’s unhappy iage and subsequent love affair, would have been novel enough. it is, elder and younger thers crowd in upon it; there clutches of Murgatroyds, of i Sue’s paralysed husband, Alec, : most important; senior Pillings, sister Jane who is a model and a string of suitors; plus child ere are odd uncles like Ottiwell

and the Rev. Alonso Dyson; un believably bitchy wives like Moira; incredible newspaper reporters like Jock Riddle; Scots bank managers, old salts, commercial photographers.

There is the complicating factor of the Story Group, for whom Archie originally worked.

In short, there is enough human material in this one volume to make half a dozen normal novels and the author’s efforts to shovel it all to gether is about as exhausting to the reader as an all-night session with the Old Testament.

The Crowthers of Bankdam was the first of Armstrong’s Crowther Chronicles. Probably the most suc cessful as well, as his characters at that time had not begun to multiply and cover the earth.

But even then it was obvious that he had missed his mark in not going in for script writing for Hollywood “spectaculars” a dozen leading characters, and 10,000 bit players.

(Sue Crowther’S Marriage. Pub

lished by Collins. 22/6.)