THE BLAZE OF NOON

A very unusual, esoteric first novel by a young English poet, in many ways remininscent of D. H. Lawrence. It should receive a distinguished press; I doubt its popular reception. An intensely subjective, sensitive record of a love affair between a blind man and a young girl down in Cornwall. The blind man tells the story, and his blindness makes him receptive to nuances, physical and psychic, beyond the average. There is Lawrence's preoccupation with the physical and his candor in putting it on paper; but in Heppenstall's approach there is more of the intellectual and the urbane than of the purely emotional. There is also much of Lawrence's poetry and symbolism. The plot is negligible, -- merely the tenuous and elusive emotional development of the love affair, with the sensual aspects brilliantly analyzed. There is some remarkable writing... Take care to whom you sell or give the book. Not for public libraries.