THE TYRANNY OF LOVE

Although Mr. Spencer makes a few pseudo-philosophical closing remarks about The Tyranny of Love versus The Anarchy of Love (1967) the distinction he makes is quite subtle, more than any of the proceedings here which are all overly externalized. He's not only essentially but exclusively a realistic writer deriving most of his enzymatic energy from the bleeding, blooming lower clarsses or, actually, one step up out of it via the soft-skinned serpent's brood of one Eddy Simpson, a loud and foul mouthed man who has made his wife and children grossly unhappy. The first volume (and this is the second of a contiguous fom-part series) dealt primarily with his daughter Sundy, a far more sympathetic character than her brother Matthew, the focus here. The tetralogy is presumably like Durrell's-interrelated rather than interdependent. And Matthew, just a youngster at its inception, is seen growing up (questionably) in his tortuous, tortured relationships to (a) Jane, a spiritual and intellectual influence, (b) Sundy, whom he loves-not like a brother and (c) Reg, her homosexual husband whom he also loves--not like a brother-in-law. He is wretched throughout, and perhaps it would have been a service to put him out of his misery. One questions what Mr. Spencer is attempting to prove in all that he demonstrates; perhaps experience is not always the best teacher.