BEYOND THE BLACK STUMP

A good idea and bad execution- a disappointment for Nevil Shute enthusiasts. Frankly, for this reader, it has the earmarks of something written earlier in his career- and inadequately revised. The thread of plot is adequate enough- but the dialogue, particularly the lame attempt to simulate middle class American speech, is amateurish and thoroughly annoying. Let's hope the English public won't accept it as authentic. (It must be comparable to an American dabbling in the Cockney idiom, and accepting it as legitimate Londonese.) The only factor in this novel that makes it worthwhile is the picture of life on an Australian sheep station, a prosperous one, in West Australian terms, but devoid of every comfort the hero of our tale, an American geologist, would consider essential to living. Of course he falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the rancher- and she with the mental picture of American life created by the slick magazine advertisements and the Hollywood films. Her mother insists on a postponed decision until she has visited his family. And the windup puts into juxtaposition two sets of mores- and a realization that they would not mix.... Not enough.