New Fiction MARGuARr KENNEDY: A Night in Cold Harboar. 277pp. Macmillan. 16s. MICHAEL KEO.N: The Durian Tree. 271pp. Hamish Hamilton. 16s. Gu'rHEIR WILSON: The Incorruptibles. 200pp. Hutchinson. 13s. 6d. JANEr BURROWAY: Descend Again. 212pp. Faber and Faber. 16s. HARPR LEE: To Kill a Mockingbird. 296pp. Heinemann. 16s. CHasrTNE BROOKE-ROSE: The Dear Deceit. 319pp. Secker and Warburg. 18s. -ihere is that about Miss Margaret Kennedy's A Night in Cold Harbour which resembles those pictorial puzzles which present what is seemingly an empty land- scape of woods and fields and rivers and which, on closer inspection, reveal human and animal faces at once concealed and portrayed by the innocent-seeming lines. The characters are of Jane Austen's period and some of them would seem, on the surface, to fit into Jane Austen's world, but once more appearances are deceptive. There is too much knowledge of evil here and, besides, there is a reforming zeal which is nearer to Dickens. The mention of such writers perhaps throws Miss Kennedy's novel out of balance, but there it is. the Placid world of the gentry on the one hand and, on the other, the bitter suffering of the poor, the fate of children forced into the potteries and the mines. Indeed, in essence A Night in Cold Har- bour boils down to a simple, frontal attack on the abuse of child labour. To mount her attack Miss Kennedy uses a kindly old clergyman who, like St. Paul, is struck on the instant with a revelation-the revelation in this case relating to the economic facts of his time which he had always placidly accepted-and a selfish young landowner who changes heart and tune. The core of the matter and the irony lie in the fact that in the war between the classes, the over-rich and the all too poor, the well- meaning benefactor is more truly an enemy than the avowed grinder of faces. A British ruling class is also the indirect target of Mr. Michael Keon's The Durian Tree. only here the period is post- war and the scene is Malaya. Mr. Keon is an Australian who makes it clear that he feels strongly on the subject of Singapore, but, for all his poor opinion of British rule in Malaya, he makes the chief British administrator a sympathetic person. It would, however, be a mistake to regard The Durian Tree as a political tract; it is more an adventure story provided with a running commentary on the state of Malaya between the end of the war and indepen- dence, and, tor good measure, an explora- tion into the communist mind. The adven- ture element is supplied by the kidnapping of an English girl by a communist leader, and her rescue by. an Australian planter of power and authority. It is all richer and more complex than such a summary suggests, with a number of fully drawn and assorted characters (the jungle qualifies as one) playing their various parts. The junran i ree manages to be both tough and romantic. Mr. Guthrie Wilson is another Australian, and in The Incorruptibles he sets out to explore the world of committees, that 'evasive voice of democracy grown into bureaucracy, speaking with the evasive voice of any system which protects the weakly powerful ". For his purpose he chooses a committee entrusted with the choice of a headmaster for a boy's school in Sydney. In the event the committee chooses the right man, but by no means for the simple reason that he is the right man. There are, so to speak, wheels within wheels; prejudices, passions, and self- interest are all hard at work. Mr. Wilson here shows himself as, if such a thing can be imagined, an irreverent Australian C. P. Snow. There is also a school in Miss Janet Burroway's Descend Again, a school in Arizona, but it does not come very clearly into the pioture. But then nothing in Descend Again does. It is not that Miss Burrowav's writing is obscure, although the monologues that go on in the head of Mill11ie Delaney, the young schoolmistress, sometimes tend that way. The difficulty is rather in determining precisely what Miss Rurroway's intentions are, but at least she succeeds in making a small Mexican boy's passionate desire to write convincing. Miss Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockinig- bird, also a first novel, is altogether more solid and satisfactory. Miss Lee sets her scene in Alabama, and before the end there is the inevitable trial-and sentence-of a Negro on the charge of raping a white woman; but, while Miss Lee is passionate in the cause of justice, she never loses her sense of humour. There is a warm-hearted- ness, a likeableness, about the writing which is hard to resist, although Miss Lee makes things difficult for herself by looking at the action and the characters through the eyes of a seven-year-old girl, a latter- day, female Huck Finn sprung from the Professional class. In Thie Dear Deceit Miss Christine Brooke-Rose draws a full-length portrait, working backwards in time, of a man who is an insatiable egoist, a congenital liar and a master in the art of self-deceit. There Is. too, an element of what can only be described as smarminess about him. Tlhe Dear Deceit is a kind of companion piece to Mr. Nigel Balchin's The Fall of a Sparrow, more subtly wrought and written, perhaps, yet not so readable. New Fiction