Books: What’s in a Name?

BACK (247 pp.)—Henry Green—Viking ($3).

To a growing U.S. audience, the names of British Novelists Henry Green and Joyce Gary suggest writing that shines with wit and good humor even when they are dealing with serious stuff. Though Gary’s work runs to richness and Green’s to slyness, they have one thing in common: they make most U.S. novelists of 1950 seem lugubriously pedestrian.

Of Henry Green’s eight slim little novels, Back is the third to be published in the U.S. in the last year. It is the least impressive of the three, not nearly so good as Loving, his story of life above and below stairs in an Irish castle (TIME, Oct. 10, 1949), or Nothing, his comedy of postwar London manners (TIME, March 27). But it still has many moments of typical fun contrived by Industrialist (brewery equipment) Henry Yorke, who pen-names himself Henry Green, keeps his literary identity shrouded by resolutely refusing his face to the camera.

Like all of Green’s novels, Back has a skinny plot, scarcely more than an anecdote. War Veteran Charley Summers returns to England with an ill-fitted metal leg and a battered mind. He visits the grave of his old flame Rose, who died while he was away. Everything reminds him of her: the blossoms fringing the graveyard, her father’s chatter, the name of a waitress in a pub. When Rose’s father urges him to visit an attractive London widow, Charley takes the address but shows little interest; he is still dreaming of Rose.

In London one day, Charley does visit the recommended widow, and as she opens the door he faints at her feet. Widow Nancy, it turns out, is Rose’s half-sister and living image; but Charley, still living in the past, decides it must be Rose playing a malicious game. In time, Nancy breaks the grip of his memory, and Charley learns that she, too, can be the rose of his heart.

Back lags midway, and the confused-identity persiflage is overdone. But there is still enough shine and liveliness to Green’s story to put his book well up among the most entertaining of the season.