Books: Smart Inferno

RECAPTURE THE MOON—Sylvia Thompson—Little, Brown ($2.50).

Since Aldous Huxley wrote Antic Hay in 1923, fair-minded U. S. readers may have felt that the English upper classes were getting a raw deal in modern English fiction. The works of Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, Ronald Firbank and lesser observers of the upperworld contain few characters above the rank of a knight or above the £5,000-a-year income level who are untouched by insipidity, depravity, or both. This week the far less satiric Sylvia Thompson (The Hounds of Spring) contributed another long, episodic novel depicting some unsavory doings among the best people. Since Recapture the MOON, has a central character who isfundamentally decent, and since it ends happily, its picture of social decay is not so thoroughgoing as Huxley’s, but its moral atmosphere is still distinctly gamey.

Most of the gaminess is contributed by a jaded crew of idlers called the Galère, who assemble in Paris, London. Venice and New York, indulge in easy, intermittent love affairs, drive fast cars, make scandals for the tabloids by being interviewed in crowded beds, and generally delight in their reputations for wickedness. A pale, pretty English War widow, Bianca does not really belong with them. She observes them first with detached interest, later plays their game with ironic humor, tries unsuccessfully to prevent their irresponsibility from climaxing in tragedy.

Animating spirit of the group is the French novelist, Louis Scheurer. Essentially romantic, Louis came out of his War experiences too cynical to be interested in politics, although his views were “vaguely to the Left”; too disillusioned to write good books, although his novels were critical successes; too restless to sleep, although he smoked opium. When Bianca’s young cousin Peter Cable, fresh from Oxford, gets tangled up with the Galère, they tear him apart in no time. Both Louis and Peter are arrested in an opium den, involved in a scandal that cannot be laughed off. Peter dies in a sanitarium while Bianca, who has tried to save him, and Louis, who let him go down, are at his bedside. They separate, Bianca to go through a period of mild dissipation with the Galère, Louis a season of belated sobriety. Bianca can love a man “enough to be jealous of other women, but never enough to marry him.” When she meets the changed Louis after a few years, she knows why. They start life together in a partnership that looks permanent to them, but which the reader may feel has more to live down than to live for.