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Victims and Weapons. This is a political novel. Its atmosphere of sultry gloom, its picture of a dozing colony where nobody ever really feels alert and aware, cover a record of the manipulation of the social nerves of class feeling, national conflict, racial conflict, the misunderstanding between generations and between the educated and the uneducated.
Through 285 pages of brooding, twilit misery, Martha Gellhorn's practical, brisk writing makes its way without a pitch or a roll. She suggests how the social nerves of the island are manipulated, then changes the subject before it engulfs the story. But in so doing she fails to make clear just who is doing the manipulating. In other ways as well she leaves the reader unsure of her apparent political points.
If, as seems likely, she meant Marc to exemplify the prewar French imperialist who tried to make France's colonies prosperous, literate, industrious, the story is confused by his Bohemian tastes. If his marriage to Liana is meant to show the sincerity of French concern for the well-being of the Negroes, it is muddled by his emotion. If young Pierre is meant to symbolize the France of reformed and the Popular Front, his very presence on the island is an unsolved mystery. If Liana is meant to be the victimized native, her willful intensification of disaster is incredible.
Novelists have trouble writing about the war of nerves because they fight it so hard, and because their books are such potent weapons in it. Liana is an interesting example of both these troubles.