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Books: Havoc in Kashmir

2 minute read
TIME

KINGFISHERS CATCH FIRE (282 pp.)—Rumer Godden—Viking ($3.50).

At 45, English Novelist Rumer Godden is a success. The author of ten novels, several of them about India, she fashions neat plots, her dialogue sparkles, her people have a reasonable resemblance to living beings. Since she usually muffles her main point in soft-focus symbolism, it is not always possible to say with assurance what it is that Novelist Godden is trying to say. Nonetheless, her last two books have sold close to 275,000 copies, and her A Breath of Air was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1951.

Her new novel. Kingfishers Catch Fire, is a Book-of-the-Month Club choice for June. It tells the story of Sophie Ward, a 35-year-old Englishwoman who has kept her looks, but whose brains have always been somewhat scattered. Left a widow in India with two children and a tiny pension, Sophie decides not to go home to the austere safety of Britain but to rough it in the Vale of Kashmir, where the scenery is breathtaking and the people are delightfully unspoiled. When her small daughter Teresa hears about this, she makes a face, because she would much rather live in England. But to Kashmir they go.

When they arrive, Sophie says, “How picturesque.” Teresa adds, “And dirty. “Author Godden, tongue conspicuously in cheek, works every comic possibility in the confrontation of sentimental Sophie and the Kashmir peasants. When Sophie offers to give her servants a day off, they ask in astonishment, “But—for what?” and one of them adds crushingly, “Holidays should come from God.” The whole social structure of the village is upset by Sophie’s munificence, for though she considers herself poverty stricken, they are overwhelmed by her riches. Soon the situation turns ugly: she finds ground glass and belladonna in her food, and little Teresa is kidnaped for a while.

“It was a bad day for us when you came,” says one of the villagers to Sophie. And Sophie, her eyes still fixed on an invisible star, packs her bags and shoves off with her children, this time to teach Arabic in Lebanon—once she learns Arabic.

As a portrait of an idealist whose good will leads to havoc, Sophie is convincing enough. But the story lacks focus because Author Godden never seems able to decide whether she considers Sophie a brave new woman, a likable goose or just a goose.

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