Life with the Damned

SAY NOTHING (217 pp.)--James Han-ley--Horizon ($3.95).

This bitter, brittle work has the qualities of a Byzantine mosaic. Its characters are rigidly, severely drawn; its setting is in "a tight house in a tight town where night has the depth of caves and daylight has no arch." It is written in a stream of harsh-sounding consonants, and its dialogue is a succession of jagged-edged monosyllables. Altogether, it is a novel calculated not to warm the reader but to awe him--a familiar feat for British Novelist James Hanley, 61, whose past novels have won him critical, but not popular, acclaim for their cold fury. Herbert Read has called Hanley a "great realist." and C. P. Snow writes that for "sheer power he is not surpassed by any contemporary."

Hanley's characters are locked up in a strange love-hate relationship in a town in the north of England. Joshua Baines, his wife and her sister Winifred squabble, scream and spy on one another. But none has the strength to break away: a past tragedy keeps them together. On the eve of Winifred's wedding, her fiance, Tom, was seduced by Mrs. Baines. The wedding was called off and Tom died soon after.

Every Sunday, Mrs. Baines atones for her sin. The three go to Tom's cemetery instead of church. "Crawl up the cross!" Winifred orders Mrs. Baines at the site of the grave. "Cry, you bitch, cry." Mrs. Baines obliges, while Wrinifred claws hysterically at the grave. But the rest of the week Mrs. Baines rules the household. She brutally orders her Milquetoast husband about, refuses to be in the same room with Winifred. A bad case of Calvinist repression, will-less Joshua cannot even bring himself to say "I want." His only solace is the Bible and the thought of death. Mrs. Baines consoles him: "Think of a day when you're nothing, Mr. Baines. Nothing."

When the family takes in a lodger, he is appalled at the Baineses' isolation. He asks why there are no newspapers or radio. why the windows are always sealed and the doors bolted. "We're right inside ourselves," Mrs. Baines explains, "and nobody'll ever get in and pull us out." The lodger lures Joshua and Winifred out for walks, but they cannot wait to get back to punishing and being punished.

But there are occasional glimpses of their pathetic longing for a better life. For all his disgust, the lodger finds it difficult to leave this house, and so, implies Hanley. would anybody. For this is no unique madhouse; as Author Hanley sees it, it is the human condition.

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