Novel on West Coast Absorbing

This is unlikely, but author Bill Pearson, an Auckland English lecturer, has written an absorbing and technically polished novel about New Zealand's delinquent West Coast.

Coral Flat is essentially the story of Paul Rogers, a young teacher returning to the Coast in 1945 after his army stint overseas. He is unwillingly involved in a strike crisis in Coal Plat, which at first he cannot take seriously. Because he tries to bring to the small mining community knowledge and experience gained in his years away he finds himself in conflict with the township which claims his love and loyalties. His own emotional life is also deeply involved.

Author Pearson has written a book conforming closely to the modern definition of a novel—the interaction of ordinary people in a community.

He has done so successfully, too. Coal Flat explores in breadth, depth and subtlety the relation of an individual to his community.

Most of the book's characters are convincing and very human. None are whitewashed. Occasionally, though, there is a jarring note. Pearson's description of the old, diehard Labour M.P. Omalley worrying about his substantial brewery share holdings does not ring true.

Few novelists are as equally at ease describing both men and women as Bill Pearson. Two women—Lil Palmer and Miss Dane-are possibly Coal Flat's most convincing characters.

Many of the situations in Coal Flat are ordinary and everyday, but the novel is never humdrum. The West Coast, although part of New Zealand, is in almost every way a little different., This strangeness, perhaps product of the ruggedness of Coast life, makes the book compelling reading, for New Zealanders at least.

Pearson's style, simple and lacking descriptive passages is in perfect keeping with the novel's Coast background.

I. F. G.