Side Of
p. 95 · Read in the full issue
The Seamiest Side Of London
Except that the background is backstreet London, instead of backstreet Dublin, Paul Smith’s second novel The Stubborn Season follows much the pattern set in his first, The Country woman.
WRITING with a pen soaked in black Irish humour, he tears a strip out of the stark reality of the seamiest side of London and presents it as though all life were ever thus.
Its most unreal element is the cen tral figure, Barbara, 13, congenital innocent, who leaves Dublin for Eng land with the idea of finding her father, who had deserted his family some time before.
Falling amongst lustful West In dians, passionate Americans, friendly prostitutes and the scum of the Lon don slums, she manages to weave a pure, if devastating, course towards her goal. That she can do this at all perhaps is best attributed to the author’s Irish whimsey—or to senti ment.
However one may feel about this type of contemporary novel—and stark realism is not necessarily enter tainment—it has to be acknowledged that the author paints on no mean canvas. It is, to the contrary, crowded with characters, each in the round, and very much larger than life. (THE STUBBORN SEASON. Heinemann. 26/-.)