Contented Riffraff

THE JOYFUL CONDEMNED (395 pp.)--Kylie Tennanf--Sf. Martin's ($2.75).

The McGartys were Australian riffraff --and well content to be, so long as nobody tried to reform them. Hector ran the "Sword of Fortune," a pub near Sydney's waterfront, where blood flowed almost as freely as beer. Grandma lived near by, pretending to be deaf yet privy to every racket within miles. Wilma had eight children, none legitimate. Fred, during a turn at the reform school, ate a tin of nails to spite the superintendent. Clarrie was a con man and the family intellectual: "It's a sort of poetry," he said, "to read over the names of race horses."

But in many ways the sturdiest of the McGartys, though an adopted one. was Big Rene. At 15, built like a lady wrestler, she already had behind her a notable career of streetwalking, entertaining G.I.s and breaking out of reformatories. Her philosophy of life was simple: "I hate work."

When The Joyful Condemned opens, Rene has just lured a rookie cop to her room and run off with his trousers. And for the rest of the story, Rene and The Joyful Condemned tumble along to much the same tough, brawling pace as the opener. Kylie Tennant, a 41-year-old Australian woman novelist, appears to know the sharp side of Sydney almost as well as she knows how to turn a sharp sentence. Sample: "The waitresses were elderly, hard women who carried food reluctantly, but in the hope it might poison someone."

Big Rene's escapades form the main plot. They take her on a quick whirl through reform school, a marathon party with some furloughing G.I.s, a brush with genteel do-gooders, and a near marriage with a U.S. soldier named Hotspot (Hotty for short), which is interrupted by the rude appearance of the cops. But The Joyful Condemned is the sort of novel that lavishly scatters half a dozen subplots and a small army of minor characters. Novelist Tennant tosses in a raucous riot scene in the girls' reformatory, a wild chapter in which two young racketeers try to burglarize their boss's home, a shrewd snapshot of middle-class ladies cooing over the tough little delinquents they are eager to save.

Novelist Tennant's young toughies have an indestructible suspicion of the people who run things. Says one of them: "I get fed up with people being nice and me not able to do a thing about it." Devoid of ordinary morals, they are convinced that all they need, for happiness, is a little luck. The cops are no great worry. As Big Rene says: "They can't kill you. Have to fill in too many forms."

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