Room at the Bottom

FROM THE HAND OF THE HUNTER (277 pp.) -- John Braine -- Houghfon M/'f-flin ($3.75).

In Room at the Top (TIME, May 27, 1957), British Novelist John Braine dealt with the reek of ill-gained success as experienced by a bounder inwardly appalled by his own amorality. In his second novel, Braine deals with the opposite, savors the sour scent of failure as lived by a welfare-state weakling. When the book opens, Dick Corvey, the novel's nonhero, is in a tuberculosis hospital. Behind him lie an army stretch marked by cowardice and a childhood marred by rich but weird imagination. He had peopled a sinister world in which the evil Vodi, led by a heartless witch, controlled human destinies; as an adult, he seems under her spell still.

He has never had a decent job, has always instinctively looked for the softest touch--and in his heart he knows that his own weakness has always been the enemy. His girl has walked out on him, and his best friend is stalking her. But he still has his looks, his tenuous charm. For a time it seems that his love for a nurse will pull him out of his resentment and self-pity; but she recognizes that any wife of Dick's is bound to become a mere crutch. At the end, the author unconvincingly suggests that Dick may yet try for the better prizes of life.

This grey, depressing tale is saved by Author Braine's sure knowledge of his characters. He is unpitying as he sketches their fretful struggles to swim free of the muddy currents of ordinariness that surround ordinary Englishmen. Their speech rings as true as the clink of cheap teacups, their attempts at gaiety have all the poor authority of weak beer.

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