Fatherly Advice

MY SON, MY SON!--Howard Spring-- Viking ($2.50).

Unlike U. S. book reviewers, who rarely write novels, British book reviewers turn novelists almost as naturally as cocoons turn into moths. While this metamorphosis seldom produces a first-rate novel, it does produce, from plain readers' viewpoint, a pleasing bulk of readable fiction. With their ears continually close to readers' hearts, no one learns better than book reviewers that the warmest heart beats are stimulated by a readable story, lively plot, colorful atmosphere, easy prose, a minimum of literary pioneering. Thus informed, British reviewers, with a better average than most, turn out best-sellers as expertly as a veteran bookkeeper twirls a combination safe lock.

Latest British reviewer to burst into best-selling mothhood is Howard Spring of the London Evening Standard, whose "Book of the Month" choice is a lively competitor of the organized book clubs. With publication last month of My Son, My Son!, plain English readers were pleased as they had not been since J. B. Priestley unfolded from his cocoon. My Son, My Son! is a sad story. But with its generous length (649 pages), plot and number of characters, its easy. Dickensian narrative, a fortifying moral, the story carries its own self-comforting device-- not unlike the jet of oil that plays on high-speed emery wheels to prevent tools losing their temper.

The story of two fathers, lifelong friends, and their sons, it differs from most British family novels in one main respect. Instead of portraying the conflict of old and new social forces, it poses a more strictly moral theme: the evil consequences of parents trying to realize their unfulfilled ambitions in their sons. The worse example of deluded fatherhood is William Essex (narrator of the story), who rises from the Manchester slums to fame as a novelist, determines that his only son, Oliver, shall have all the advantages he missed. His friend, Dermot O'Riorden, dedicates his son Rory to the cause of Irish revolution, which he laid aside when he became a famous interior decorator. Conveniently for the story, both sons (who also become friends) follow the course laid down for them. Oliver Essex, a beautiful, spoiled child, grows into a handsome snob, treats his doting father like dirt. In spite of that, Essex continues to pamper him. But when Oliver, at 18, wants (and gets) one thing his father never had--a sophisticated beauty named Livia--the Essex-&-son relation blows up, Oliver refuses to return. Meanwhile, Rory O'Riorden becomes a leading Irish revolutionist, a good man wasted, as his father has long since decided.

In the end, when Oliver has ruined Livia, caused the suicide of Rory's beautiful sister, has shot down his friend Rory in the Irish revolution, and is himself hanged for murdering a cashier, the reader has the feeling that these disasters are not entirely the fault of the fathers; at least some of the guilt ought to be credited to the middleclass, middle-age, middle-of-the-road, muddled British morality of Author Spring himself.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.