BOOKS
FICTION CHRONICLE
THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD. By Anthony Powell. William Heinemann
Ltd., London. 12s 6d.
A PERFECT WOMAN. By L. P. Hartley. Hamish Hamilton, London.
12s 6d.
THE WALKER. By Patri ck O 'Brian. Harcourt, Broce. $3 .50.
HERITAGE. By Anthony West. Random House. $3.75 .
THE INHERITORS, By Wil liam Golding. Faber and Faber ltd., London.
12s 6d.
THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING. By Kingsley Amis. Victor Gollancz ltd.,
London. 12s 6d.
A CHARMED LIFE. By Mary McCarthy. Harcourt, Brace. $3.95.
THE DEER PARK. By Norman Moiler. G . P. Putnam. $4.00.
Of the eight works of fiction listed above, all published last
season, four were published in America and four in England, though of
the books published in America, one
(Heritage)
is by an Englishman
and one
(The Walker)
is by an Anglo-Irishman who now lives in
France. Possibly the selection is at fault here; perhaps one season's pub–
lication is not enough to judge by.
All
the same, this distribution of
authorship is disturbing to our conviction that the energy of Anglo–
Saxon fiction has been passing to America.
Let us consider the best first. This plainly means Mr. Powell. Mr.
Powell's book is the third in a still unfinished series,
The Music of Time;
the first two were
A Buyer's Market
and
A Question of Upbringing.
Though the remark may well be offensive to both, I think Mr. Powell
ought to be considered in conjunction with C. P. Snow, not simply be–
cause each has undertaken a
comedie humaine,
but also because each
has a firm grip on the actuality of the world, despite his imaginative
penetration of it. Mr. Powell can take us about the London of his time
and show us its people and places; they exist. That may seem a simple
accomplishment, but it is certainly one well beneath the notice of most
of these writers. Moreover, Mr. Powell's vision of people and places is
all of a piece, so that his novel, for all its complexity, leaves us with a
single feeling about the world, a wry, self-possessed, sympathetic melan–
choly. This feeling colors everything from "the passages [of a hotel,
