1949-05-21 — Page 11

DAB and FLOUNDER

-by WALTER

ICED

THE HONGKONG/TELEGRAPH, – SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1949.

-WREATH OF ROSES, By Elizabeth Taylor,

Peter Davies 8s. 6d. 253 pages.

0

VER the summer holiday world of Frances and Liz and Camilla there rises n cloud no bigger than a man's hand.

It is a world gentle but by no means sleepy; affec- tionate, but oh, so intelligent; feminine, but quite con- scious of the inadequacy of being merely feminine.

The cloud, shaped like the hand of Richard Elton swells in the sky (particularly over,Camilla) until it stains all the landscape with sulphurous light. From Ita- Increasing presence derives the undertone of horror, of shocked surprise, of delicate tension which is the special quality of Elizabeth Taylor's latest and (as many will think) best novel.

Fascinated, we watch the mercury, rising in the

thermometer.

clinical

This is a story which moves - with extraordinary lightness speed. It is stylish. It quivers with nerven, moods and Impressionability.

11

ir-

ritable. exacting. slyly humorous. And it is deliciously Aware of scents, scenes, weather and omens.

Omens! Camilla knows from the moment that man commits suicide so inexpertly at the rall- way junction that it "means something," that It bodes по good. She feels, too, that Richard, whom she meets in the train, makes a false response to

"Very upselling, the tragedy. I fars,

She

ELIZABETH TAYLOR

flirts with the macabre

says

GEORGE MALCOLM THOMSON

nicest

way,

especially

Is "handsome"; like a film star. the But the man's whole per. He has empty blua eyes. He women with titles. conality in "wrong" for her. Is writing a book about Privately, she throws at him all war it will certainly the insulis she can think of he-readable.

FROM HERE AND THERE :

the be un-

In short, Camilla, thirtyish, secretary of a girls' school, is in love.

Octopus Brought H

Up The Goods

Sydney: Ferry deckhand Ted Sleek,

on

*

ANTILLY distrust the baby and joins in the hunt after Arthur, Sho says he hands himself round among the ladles as if he were a plate of

¿cones.

Frances defends Arthur ER Irlends, Frances and against her. She detects, too, Liz, with whom she is that danger lies, not in Liz, Im- spending the holidays, pulsive and quick to feel (and have no difficulty in diagnosing absorb) disappointment but in what has happened. They dis- Camilla. approve, in conversations which are poised, taut, and precisely By Bike fencing

pegs concealed in the hem is phrased-rather 20. WOR Ashing of Paris's colution of the problembouts, Church Point, near Sydney, re- of how to undress gracefully on contly when he pulled in octopus which had a full bottle of gin in one tentacle. He and four friends kept the gin but threw the octopus back. They and a amali crowd sampled the gin and waited hopefully for the octopus to bring up another. bottle, but it would not caught a second time.

be

are made.

Found with a

a fila New York: Prospectors with Jeeps, buildozers and all kinds of complicated machinery are searching America's mountains for uranium, the mineral from which atom bombs A woman, Mrs Maggie Baker, found what may be America's richest deposit with the aid of nall-file. Wandering through Northern n potrified forest in Arizona, Mrs Baker was trigued by a canary-yellow rub- stance In between the stone logs. She scruped some off and took it to an assayer. His ver- dict-uranium and plenty of It.

Franch fashions Paris: A bathing robe which tent with wooden is really a

T

*

that are

sup-

that

الورد

'children. The seen born in Reading. „WAKALAL A govorems; and, then ga Tibrarian) has been welling`alneo ghe way a chiley: kai new 2learned to bywrite" whila"" answering questions.

alling

warrels and working Wilkost sejtyment, and think by call oat whin i am doing the iraning,”

Frances' friend, does the man read" so mary newspapers? There is nothing much in them. Some girl murdered.

And why that look of wild Icar when bis oyes meet Richard's?

Daniel George

N the jacket of a book just published. I read: "Whata command of Janguagel Every line is a play of colours; thero is not dull image, not an adjective without sparkle. It is p continuous offervescence...

Opening the book, I read.on the Brat paga:

"The man, then, took of his moked planes, mifed several times quickly at the air of the narrow street, then cursed be- WCTO

tween his teeth cacredlal"

Liz'a baby Jins teething trouble; Frances decides to give up painting; Mrs Parsons, the help, an excellent comle InvoD- long and yellow. tion (how she dislikes Camilla he muttered through his more." "Sho can't even get to her feet No, it is not from a book by

It in when a gentleman comes into Beachcomber.

from room") has trouble with WORLD WITHOUT A VISA," her slatternly daughter, Euniss translated from the French of Or rather Euniks hus the trouble. If only she could re- member the name of that man from the gas-company!

And Camilla walks closer and closer to danger.

the

ERE, in short, is a novel H which

on

Jean Malaquals,

Meanwhile, a different kind of language is disturbing me bad language in print. There is Bever any necessity for it.

The clever writer

to

-BOOKS-

lowed in their extensiya pero grinations.

They are two boys, fatherless walls. One of them has left his drunken mother and bruta) stop-father, The educated, hoa run away Rchool.

.

pendence of one on the other,

·Ïta offect on outsiders, tho realisation 'that, the emotional partnership must be dissolved.

W

77HEN a woman writes norvo-racker, you

cap

bet personal experiences are involved somewhere. Check up on novelist Olivia Manning, and you find who had quite a

wer.

Evacuated by air from Rumania when the Gorman marched in, she reached Athens, worked there for the British Mission, and made another quick getaway when the Ger mans occupied Greece,,

Then Cairo, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. From all this she has distilled a novel full of colours,

smcils sights, sounds, and "ARTIST AMONG THE MISS ING" (Heinemann, da, (d) ·

:

.ho

other, better The man in it is a painter. In

from the piping times of peace

had been linpplly "wedded `both to his wife and his art. When

the

given á at Calro-reminiscent Bliter-sweet stuff here for thousands who served in Epupt. For one reason and another

gots his At first adrift in the ugly. 12. effects without it, as he gets slums of Leeds (period early the blast of war blew in his them without recourse to dialect twentieth century), they wan cars he tried to Imitate the act or phoneticisation. In Elizabeth der into the countryside, taking ton of a Uger. мая

He falled and Bowen's Inst novel,

"THE amuses the mind

spell at farming, go navvying HEAT

OF THE DAY."

for with a railway gang, work in a staff job and plays agreeably

then alertly example, the dialogus of two coal mine and

Join A the nerves. It renders the small but complex estrange-cockney girls is made absolutely travelling fair. ments of life. And it carries on convincing without the dropping

Ellis, the younger, a York- a very elegant firtation with of a single "h." the macabre.

Why? Because Elizabeth shire tyke and born fighter in his is one of those trouble-in- Dowen has trained her ear

all the time training his friend, childhood cases-he develops a A Wreath of Roses is an out-catch the perfect rhythm

Mark, in the art of self-defencu neurosis which manifests itself of the natural speech.

and of attack that is the better in morbid jealousy, complicated standing novel by one

part of defence. At the falt by fear of hydrophobia. Poor remarkable English

Geoffrey, His hydrophobia has most

they become professional writers of the day.

A lot of people are going to

boxers. Thereafter their ambi- no dog bite, but his suspicion about his wife is not without lon is confined to the ring.

foundation. Poor Viola,. too! read it. And enjoy it. Many of them will be encountering

What I Taylor for the first

And remarkable in The times, the places and, ol. Elizabeth

has no bad lan this book is the honesty of its the opportunities she has to ex- tone. What a And!

fri guage

little Percy style...

old-fashioned cuso her.

But the Important Coates-thirty years a miner perhaps; not pepped up, not has written in · "THE WORLD copying America in

toughness all, is the

COME SKETCHING. Ay Pacy Bradshaw Studio, 151, 96 pages. Eight famous artist ED sketch- ing The result is a book, pas only invely to look at. but als full of valuable guidance for all the amateurs who lake out brushes and paint-boxes on Sundays.

Camlila, so aware of herself, LIBRARY ELISTO so unsure of herself, so much the proud, unbending spinster, inclined to "put herself too much in other people's

places instead of allowing them to stay there themselves"-she creates herself for

ceaselessly us by taking herself apart, regretting herself, pitying herself.

No baby; can't paint-left to do the washing up!

A. little atter the others, she Richard begins fo realise that

And from those normal, un a crowded beach. Mme. Schla sparing exchanges (and the less

collec-cruel remarks paretil in her summer

character emerges showed a green bathing pressed), tion robe made of towelling which subtly.

Frances, an older woman than hangs like a loose heel-length cape. Concealed in the wide the other two, was governess to sweeping hem were woaden Liz, is now a famous painter- pegs. to pin the robe down on a matden lady and an artist who remembers Flaubert's "Be to the beach or sand so that it

your forms a small tent. Your head regular and ordinary in and body form the tent pole.life, like a bourgeois. Bo

satin or linen bathing you may be violent and original Black suits with enormous peart but-in your work." tons down the back or side were Frances has become fierce. appear! His autobiographical

The very, newest She no longer finds sentiment snatches don't it together. also shown.

The glamorous wor record; thing for beach wear is to have in painting shabby French hotel

heart-rending childhood bedrooms. Savage, whirling suns the o skirt in which one side is a

landscapes. She with the sadistic father. Was trouser leg, and the other side cowl on her

he plano he really-almost certainly bangs Dohnanyl on the a skirt.

enormous

Ke was not a group caplain? and has bought an

It is age. dog.

is short of money and does not hesitate to accept Camlila's cheque.

He deserves it!

New York: Here is Congress trying to save money and along. comes Senator Virgil Chapman wanting them to pay a consti- tuent 31 years back army pay. This constituent was called up in

that

Liz has a baby and Arthur, her husband, a vicar: She com- plains

no longer he scribbles her gay, teasing notes which take three hours' concen- tration with the Dictionary of

is not what he appears to be. Indeed, he has hardly made up his mind what he is trying to

19

Camilia focis hur feet sinking through the ground. She paralysed but not blinded by 1010 and told to go home

love. She is consclous of dan- and awalt further orders. Thej Quotations, No. Now it ger, but does not realise how Senator says he is still at home long. dull letters that are writ- grim the danger is.

ten in no time at all. And ho and s. nwalling further ders.

thinks of other women, oh, in

or-

is

Why, asks Morland Beddoes, the Allm producer · who is

VIGNETTES OF LIFE

"HERE'S THE

·TROWEL YOU PUT AWAY IN THE GARAGE LAST FALL,

MEMBER?

F

སྨཱ

BANE AND ENDURANCE. Dy Marcel Boulestin Home and Van That 10s 5d. 152 part. Memories of London and Pacis and of Camous restaurant in pre-war and between-war years Nostalgic.

•

TALK OF TUS DEVIL. By Even Butler Oliver Moxon, Te, ed. 120 pages. A satirični navel, with the Devil as its leading personage spa serious underlying theme which hecomes more apparent the alory develo04

•

*

ADULTS AN THE COLD : PROBLEM Anthony M. Ludovicj, Carroll and Nicholson, 10s 6. 258 page. Forty years ago Mr. Ludovici descrived children s "those little monstrosities whose disproportionately large hende arg uenerit our clouds and who BIG they were above yat row he thinks ihem.

WILLK tis extravagant But not much. to judge by his book.

*

THE STRANGE LIFE OF AUGUST STRINDBERG, by Eliza

Hamish Hamilton. bath Sprigge

15% 846 pages. A man of genius. in madness as in other things. This biography will do very wel! As an introducilon in his tormented 11.

London Express Service.

O has Perey Coates. His

novet

been room

it.

thing

after

story, and this--a

nerves

18 WIDE ENOUGH" (Lehmann, of manner or speech: but good drawn-out drama of 101. Gd.3 what there has long traditional English, dignified, will shake anyone. The rather gritty style of the writing sulis for an English persuasive, convincing. picaresque novel, a chain of

Remarkable, too, is the treat the situations and the charac credible adventures, a succes ment of the friendship of the ters.

manhood alen of incidents in the lives of two boys (grown to two characters who must be fol- before we leave them), the de-

Soldier

Prince Took

A Wile Back To This

COLDIES · PRINCE Haroun-ul-Rashid-

16-year-old

Abbasal flew to London, fell in Love, aud married Katherine Scott,

"daughter,

of

#railwayman's

Fulham.

Marville-road,

Now

That was 18 months ago. their State, Bahawalpur, in Pakistan, has issued, four stamps to memorate 28

ycars! rule Katherino's father-in-law, the Nawab, da

COMTM

by w

T more or less regular inter- blight. vals a mysterious descends upon literature, and co-operatively authors become engaged in making the most of

a fit of depression.

The prevailing pessimism in French literature may come local Justication."

have

Meanwhile, here's Jean-Pau! Sartre himself. "THE DIARY OF ANTOINE ROQUENTIN” (Lehmam, sa, ed.) was his first-

written before he had novel, the war for an excuse.

Its French tillo was La Nau¬ tec. Why this has not been.. translated as "Nausea" I can- not think, because it is a per- fectly sickening book... of

He spends much of his £6,000-a-week Income on Im-

size proving the sun-scorched country-one-third the England.

Shown here is one of the stamps, which carries a plo- distribute ture of the Nawab and a river dam he built to water to grow'colton, rice, and wheat, Perforation: 1234 by 14.

-London Express Service).

It purports to be the diary of

a writer engaged upon an his- torical biography, and it records came everything hasty which within his earshot, eyeshot, and noseshot

"Early Discoveries

BY KEMP STARRETT

JUST TUS-

LITTLE NEEDLE IN

TA' CARBURETOR "

VAS STICK

IS ALL

-(London Express Service)

THE NOT EARLY-EVOIGH DIS-

COVERY OF THE BEST TROVEL

BURIED IN THE SPRING MUD.

*AEAVENS! IT'S THE BOREDUMBS,

WITH-

TROSE

KIDS!

THE SUDDEN

DISCOVERY

THAT THE

·LAWN "MOVER. NEEDS SHARPENING, AS USUAL.

-WRUNK

OIL, MADGES

·GET ME SOME - HOT WATER.. WILL YA M

• THE DISCOVERY THAT THE FEET ADENT SO TOIGH AFTER A ・WINTER; ITS.

AN EASY

CHAIR

SMACK

ANOTHER. EARLY DISCOVERY: THAT

AS COON AS THE WEATHER SMOOTHS OUT THE YEAR-ROUND COUNTRY RESIDENTS DISCOVER

THEY HAVE FRIENDS!

· AND THE DISCOVERY THAT PAINT BRUSHES. CAN TIDU INTO

CAST IRON IN:

ONE SHORT

VINTER

HE'LL BE AS HOT AS A BAKER'S KNUCKLES VIEN HE DISCOVERS (FOUR-BUCKS, FIFTY) "THAT HE

COULD HAVE FIXED. IT AIMSELF. Ledger Syndiente

THE DISCOVERY THAT MOTKS

HAVE NO

CLACK SEASON

·OR LAY-OFTS.

YOU DISCOVER

THAT THE BUG. SPRAYER 10 "STOPPED: EP- UNTIL YOU TRY TO FIND OUT

TAWAY