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BEHIND THE MIRROR by Robin Maugham Kirkus Star

BEHIND THE MIRROR

By

Pub Date: April 8th, 1955
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace

David Brent, a motion picture script writer, is sent to Africa to contact Norman Hartleigh who as a young man in the foreign service had been the last lover of an aging actress, Daphne Moore, whose life is to be filmed. Nasty gossip precedes Brent's arrival in the highlands where Hartleigh, now 60, is living with a Cockney boy of 26, Bill Wayne. But the man Brent finds is sad and seedy character, while Bill Wayne is engaged in a rather dangerous romance with a married woman. While refusing permission to use his identity in the film, Hartleigh reveals the real nature of his relationship with Daphne Moore whom he remembers as a meretricious woman he had hated- not loved; of his strong attraction to her youngster which had led to the vindictive denunciation which had driven him out of the country- and the service; and of the memory of that boy whom he is to meet again- in Bill- and for whom, in a protective gesture, he now gives his life.... An always expert raconteur, this story of a ""tainted wether"" cencures the intolerant flock, while irony sharpens the rebuke.