Frank Swinnerton

Nocturne Frank Swinnerton

Mr. Swinnerton, like Mr. James Joyce, does not repudiate the depths for the sake of the surface. His people are not splashes of appearance, but living minds. Jenny and Emmy in Nocturne are realities inside and out; they are imaginative creatures so complete that one can think with ease of Jenny ten years hence or of Emmy as a baby. The fickle Alf is one of the most perfect Cockneys-a type so easy to caricature and so hard to get true-in fiction. If there exists a better writing of vulgar lovemaking, so base, so honest, so touchingly mean and so touchingly full of the craving for happiness than this that we have here in the chapter called After the Theatre, I do not know of it. Only a novelist who has had his troubles can understand fully what a dance among china cups, what a skating over thin ice, what a tight-rope performance is achieved in this astounding chapter Above these figures again looms the majestic invention of "Pa." Every reader can appreciate the truth and humour of Pa, but I doubt if anyone without technical experience can realize how the atmosphere is made and completed and rounded off by Pa's beer, Pa's needs, and Pa's accident, how he binds the bundle and makes the whole thing one, and what an enviable triumph his achievement is. This is a book that will not die. It is perfect, authentic, and alive. H. G Wells Frank Arthur Swinnerton was an English novelist, critic, biographer and essayist. He was the author of more than 50 books and as a publisher's editor helped other writers including Aldous Huxley and Lytton Strachey.