Albert Wendt sings thru'

The Samoan voice of Albert Wendt comes singing through again in a collection of short stories of com mendably wide range. Extremely regional, as good stories should be, they have a universality of theme modified only by Wendt’s strong analysis of the peculiarly Samoan character which, incidentally, he conveys very well.

In the nine offerings here, nine short stories or, depending on your classification, two short novellas and two short stories, my preference runs to a couple in heavy idiom, mainly because of inspired characterisation.

Captain Full—the Strongest Man Alive who got Allthings Strong Men Got, is a classic examination of a Samoan Pal Joey. Told in the first person it offers a thought-provoking entertainment of high good humour, based on a thorough appraisal of a reasonably worthless character.

In the same idiom, Virgin-wise— the Last Confession of Humble Man who is Man got Religion, flourishes the philosophy of acceptance which, good or bad, rules many a Polynesian life. It is one of the two which

have previously been published in magazines; the other, A Descendant of the Mountain seems to me to lack the resolution its situations de serve, and perhaps it was an early attempt.

But most of these stories are well designed and all of them probably tell far more of Samoa than a shelf of guide-books. The longest, the title-story, is an understanding ac count of an adolescent’s slide into a more than personal tragedy.

Now in his late thirties, Wendt should be on the threshold of his effective writing career, and it is to be hoped that his recent appointment to the University of the South Pacific, after being Principal of Samoa College, will leave him time and opportunity for the writing of more good fiction.

(Emerging Pluralism: The Samoan

Community In New Zealand, By

David Pitt and Cluny Macpherson. Long man Paul Ltd. Cased $5.95, paper $3.50.)

(Flying-Fox In A Freedom Tree,

by Albert Wendt. Published by Longman Paul Limited, Takapuna, Auckland, NZ.

Cased, $4.95; Pacific paperback, $2.50.)

Albert Wendt