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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 23. September 17, 1968

Books — … with love

Books

… with love

This first novel of a woman involved in the English intellectual-literary contemporary scene uses all the 'right' points of departure but fails to draw the necessary links between them. Her novel becomes studded with names, references and events but the originality, the interest, the substance which should have been between this name-dropping is not there.

Her novel begins "Tell me about Wittgenstein, I begged," and ends with the observation that there are, "No Nijinskis in the ethical class." Yet this intellectual snobbery cannot disguise the flaws in this novel. It is the story of a rather off-beat girl who lives in London, her lovers, her literary and political affiliations, her marriage and subsequent acceptance of her role as wife and mother. Norma Meacock allows herself to dominate her book, so that only her own views and character are ever explained and it becomes plainly autobiographical at least so far as a young bohemian girl in London would like to imagine herself.

She is the wife of Peter Fryer (Mrs Grundy and Private Case, Public Scandal); Klaus the hero of Thinking Girl is a thinly disguised Peter Fryer even so far as being involved in sexual research at the British Museum. He is quoted from his research on this subject: " 'From Guilford' he said 'Infused on the door of a public convenience:

It's no use standing on the seat

The crabs in here can jump ten feet' "

Her sources are acknowledged in the first chapter, when Jockey, a man she has met at a rather contrived demonstration asks her what she does:

"I told him 'I write, you see but not fiction. Stories are carpets; they hide the floor. I keep a note book,' 'Like Doris Lessing?' he ventured. 'Like Simone Weil' I retorted."

—" 'I would've thought,' he hazarded, 'that Sibelius has all Beethoven's faults and none of his virtues.' 'He has them,' I replied, 'so thoroughly that they are virtues.' "

— "She [Ivy Compton-Burnett] creates a world,' I said, 'where grotesque malevolence underlies human relations.' 'Our own;' he suggested. 'There's no one-to-one correspondence between art and life' I said."

— " 'I go sometimes to Antonioni, Bereman, Fellini, I told him." In Paris I saw The Andalusian Dog. Most people gasped and turned away when a razor sliced an eye. The surface held for a moment, then collapsed and jelly bulged out of it! "

— " 'Do you go to exhibition? Have you seen the Kandinskv exhibition? What do you make of it?' Silence. I was nonplussed. 'I don't know,' I said. T have trouble generalising.' "

Norma Meacock is at her best when she is describing with some humour her sexual adventures; her lesbian relationship with Girly, her attempted seduction by Aaron the eighty year old sculptor, her lonely landlord, randv doctor, her lover and husband. Her adventures have the certain, inevitability of de Sade's Justine, but she identifies more with the spirited Juliette. Her marriage, the birth of a child, the poverty and her husband's subsequent affairs break down her individuality. She becomes the wife rather than the "other woman", the betrayed rather than the betrayer and learns to accept the restraint on her freedom. She marries out of frivolous indecision; she wants to retain her marriage for good ordinary bourgeois reasons. Hut none of these relationships are understood or analysed: all we have is the product of a feminine sub-culture.

Norma Meacock: Thinking Girl, a novel. Neville Spearman, London, 1968. $2.80. Reviewed by Jan Walker.

• • •

When Bernard Hautterre reached five his furtherest thoughts were of school. Instead he pondered the lack of a mother who had flirted then flitted with an American soldier when Bernard was uncognisant of his psychological disability. At five, however, he thought it time to give aid and comfort to his father, an unrecognised research biologist of germs and things. He became, in rather uncertain terms, a pimp. It all began when the psychologist explained his latent homosexuality. Bernard didn't understand this, because he loved his father but didn't find other men or boys attractive. He did, however, find beautiful women attractive. Through devious and subteenal methods he managed to get them to live with Papa for an average of three years each. But in France, where 11 per cent practise the national religion, the faithful cannot re-marry without dispensation. Papa wasn't willing to play God games. Besides ne was doing all right without nuptials. Bernard, liberal boy he was, felt this unfair and was sure the Good Lord had better things in mind. And Bernard certainly didn't mind with Helene (a friend's mum), Clotilde (bumped into on the street), and finally Edith (rescued from the grown up wolves in the Bois de Boulogne).

All is bliss after Edith comes to stay: only at the very end do besetting problems arrive when it becomes imperative that Papa and Edith get married. This means dealing with Mother. Bernard had not seen Mother since she left home (and he can't remember that). However, Mother comes to a quick and thankful conclusion, thanks to the micros, and Papa can now safely both bed and wed. The ending, despite rather delicate suspension of credibility, is too pat. The whole thing is wrapped up as if the author had suddenly run out of ideas, which he probably had. The theme—"childhood is the ace of astonishment"—is dealt with unclumsily, without labouring the point. It's refreshing but far from intoxicating. Its charm is wholesome, peripheral, momentary. The characterisation of Bernard is handled with restraint and detached sympathy: he is no child horror despite the rather ridiculous machinations of the plot. The gentle irony is tempting but melts on savouring; it is candy-floss. A nice book for the rather sentimental girl-friend or liberal Mum.

Andre Couteaux: Portrait of the Boy as a Young Wolf (L'Enfant a Femmes). Translated by Barbara Wright, Macdonald, London, 1968. Distributed by Whitcombe and Tombs. 184pp. $2.35. Reviewed by Nevil Gibson.