THE GARDEN TO THE SEA

Philip Toynbee's new book (Prothalamium 1947) is a parable of his generation and he uses the myth of the expulsion from Eden on which to string his story of a compulsive and not over-virile young man who leaves his wife to join the air force. With his return home, he finds that she has become sullen and resentful, and ultimately unfaithful, in the five years she has spent alone. Toynbee uses the device of four characters, all different aspects of the main character, Adam, to tell his nervous, macabre, guilt and sex-ridden, and at times heart chilling story. The voices, with which he wars and argues, are those of his innocence, fall, and punishment, and when they are finally stilled- Adam is healed after his ordeal of the war and a broken marriage... Toynbee writes in a style which is reminiscent of Joyce- and then again Eliot- but if Eliot's newest medium is ""relaxed verse"", then Toynbee's sentences are ""taut prose"", and his book while experimental, will attract an avant-garde audience.