Books, Arts & Manners: The Show Must Go On

The Fatal Gift By Alec Waugh Farrar, 314 pp., $6.95 Alec Waugh is the author of over forty books, perhaps the best known of which in this country are the novel Island in the Sun and the memoir My Brother Evelyn, and he can justly be described as an old pro.

Sometimes it is pleasant to be in the company of a professional and watch him gracefully go through his paces. At other times the experience can be a chore, for his routine appears mechanical and tired—he is performing by habit, his material doesn’t stimulate him but he is dedicated to the principle that the show must go on, inspired or not. Reading The Fatal Gift is not exactly a chore, for the book is literate and sophisticated enough to hold the reader for at least some of the way, but it is not a pleasure either, for one strongly detects a forced, somewhat false effort on the part of the writer.

RF

About the Author

Ronald De Feo

Featured Tags

Manage following

Literature

Fiction

The Fatal Gift By Alec Waugh Farrar, 314 pp., $6.95 Alec Waugh is the author of over forty books, perhaps the best known of which in this country are the novel Island in the Sun and the memoir My Brother Evelyn, and he can justly be described as an old pro.

Sometimes it is pleasant to be in the company of a professional and watch him gracefully go through his paces. At other times the experience can be a chore, for his routine appears mechanical and tired—he is performing by habit, his material doesn’t stimulate him but he is dedicated to the principle that the show must go on, inspired or not. Reading The Fatal Gift is not exactly a chore, for the book is literate and sophisticated enough to hold the reader for at least some of the way, but it is not a pleasure either, for one strongly detects a forced, somewhat false effort on the part of the writer.