A GENTLE OCCUPATION

by Dirk Bogarde ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 1980

From the actor-author of two graceful memoirs: a nicely crafted and delightfully nostalgic piece of movie-ish fiction about a batch of British officer chaps just after World War II; it's sequinned with neo-Coward patter and with romances of various depths and persuasions. Bogarde sets his story on a fictional (Indonesian) island where the under-supplied British find themselves saddled with a double task: absorbing and rehabilitating Dutch survivors from Japanese camps; and keeping the peace as the native revolution heats up. Enter Christian Rooke, cut loose from his air-photographic-interpreter post, longing for home, but due to be shifted to an impossible position as Company Commander in a dangerous outpost. He is saved, however, by elegant Major Geoffrey Nettles, who--in a chirpy seduction scene--trades one night of gay abandon for Rooke's far cozier appointment on the island as ADC to General Leo Cutts. Cutts, although not exactly top-drawer socially, is a good and respected and well-liked soldier. He is, however, bedding Dora Foto, a wily and nasty Belgian informer who once caused the death of four men and is now exerting a malign influence on General Cutts. While young Rooke wonders how to excise Dora without causing irreparable harm to Cutts, he falls in love with half-caste Emmie (thanks to avuncular intervention by Nettles, they at last decide to marry); and a sadder romantic fate awaits officer Pullen, who must leave Dutch lover Claire when her husband, presumed dead in a camp, returns. (Pull in for parting close-up: ""l love you very much./ I know./ Nothing will ever change that./ Yes."") In addition to offstage carnage, there will be a messy maiming and a killing or two; Dora will at last be booted forth with Cutts none the wiser; and, throughout, Nettles expounds his views on coarse Americans and other dregs of humanity (""plankton; the universe is phosphorescent with their biological mediocrity""). With cool, spiffy, clipped dialogue in the grand tradition and a bit of gore to keep things hopping: a thoroughly good show.

Pub Date: April 7, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION