Our Barling Teenage Daughters

It could happen to anyone—or anyone with a teenage daughter. That’s the theme of Nancy Phelan’s new novel — The River and the Brook.

HE author is better known to us in the Pacific as a one-time jal-aids officer of the South :ific Commission; and also as the hor of the delightful non-fiction til Holiday, published and re ived here about four years ago. it was about the Gilbert Islands, a t of the Pacific that rarely attracts ters of any sort; Mrs. Phelan’s ry had the merit of being amus ;as well as informative.

Uthough a modern novel is a bit [ a departure from the Atoll liday type of writing she has done lefore with The Voice Beyond the es, an early post-war effort that a a prize in a Sydney Morning 'raid novel competition. [he new novel is a competent ce of writing and if the subject not altogether new, Mrs. Phelan pages to uncover some new angles explore. [he problems of adolescence are [ peculiar to the present age but is only in the last 20 years that v have been elevated to an exact Mice. At one time, the teen years re regarded merely as part of the uness of development. Awkward, course, but not necessarily fatal.

Special Animal

in today’s materialistic world, the pager has become a special kind [animal. Far from being of the In-but-not-heard section of the nmunity, as of old, their likes and jlikes are catered for by a whole tion of industry; their opinions ight on problems that were once to the grandfathers of the race, ley have never had fewer restric ns and responsibilities and more iedom —yet this age group has ver been sourer, more frustrated [what they take to be miserable; d parent-child relationship has ver been at a lower ebb.

There has been a whole library itten on the subject of youth oblems, without anyone coming up Ih the answer.

For her theme, Mrs. Phelan takes r o 16-year-olds, near-miss juvenile linquents, and their families. Case lis Louise Anderson, daughter of artistic if hard-working couple

who fill their entire lives with their own affairs. After school, Louise comes home to an empty house, which she resents. But she resents even more the fact that her parents are intellectual and different instead of suburban and conforming.

They, for their part, feel that they are doing what they can if they make no demands on her and work hard in order to send her to a “good” school.

Case A, therefore, seems on the face of it—or according to the best books on the subject—a classic set up for child delinquency.

Case B is Jenny Harrison. Her parents are stolid, middle-class surburbia—Venetian blinds, wrought iron railings, joint at week-ends, church on Sundays. What’s more, when Jenny comes home from school her mother is comfortably in the kitchen baking Anzac biscuits and chocolate layer cake.

Yet, when opportunity offers in the way of leather-coated, motor-bike riding, uncouth young toughs, Jen follows Louise’s lead into deceit and incipient delinquency without any prompting.

Mrs. Phelan does an able job of getting inside Louise’s skin and of following her and Jenny along the path of near-disaster via a raw description of what is usually only hinted at as a teenage sex orgy.

This is the story of the Andersons and the Harrisons, as well as the girls and their boys—and particularly of Harriet Anderson whose greatest desire is to be able to continue her serious painting instead of being chained to nine-till-five commercial art. Although not a “natural mother” like Jenny’s parent, she nonetheless is much more sensitively aware of the whole problem. Should she stifle her own desire to develop her own means of self-expression in order to cosset her child who shows no sign of being appreciative of anything?

Nancy Phelan lays the whole busi ness of modern child-parent relations on the line but offers no real solu tion on how to successfully get the young through adolescence.

Probably there is no real solution except endurance; or to equip them with a complete set of inhibitions,

1910 model. Dangerous as in hibitions are alleged to be, it has yet to be proved that they are more so than the alternative open-go treatment.

Most of the story takes place in the Sydney seaside suburb of Manly.

To that extent it is Australian in geography and background although the theme itself is pretty well universal to Western countries.

(The River And The Brook.

Published by Macmillians. Price, 21/-.1