January 1961
Miss Ertz’s strong suit is perhaps her talent for showing more or less ingeniously unhappy marriages with one partner - usually a man - struggling to preserve the unsatisfactory status quo, until Life (I think it does have a capital L) sweeps them into a different position where the old struggle no longer applies and fresh efforts are needed. In the Cool of the Day has much in common in these respects with an earlier - and I think much better - novel of hers, Now East - Now West. In her new book she presents us with two couples, one American, one English. The American is rich and married to a rich American with invalid health, including a bad heart which precludes her having any children: she is driven nearly mad with boredom as being kept as a fragile and chronic convalescent. The Englishman, Murray, is poor, has worked up to being a partner the hard way, and is married to a horrible blonde called Sibyl (Miss Ertz is so uncompromisingly hard on her that she comes out plain horrible): their only child is mentally deficient due to its mother having German measles when pregnant with it, and there has also been a car accident which has disfigured Sibyl so that she is a mass of violent self-pity and resentment against her husband. Murray and the American wife, Christine, meet in New York, and when he returns to England she writes to him and eventually arrives there with the invitation that she, Sibyl and Murray should all go on a holiday to Greece. Christine and Murray have then to resolve their feeling for each other with their senses of responsibility to the other two partners, and this situation is overtaken by tragic circumstances. All this is perfectly valid material for a certain kind of novel, but here it seems never to make its own grade. Like trying to make fish swim in a pressure of water to which they are not naturally adapted, the emotional temperature aimed at here is unsuited to the coarse delineation of the characters involved - with resultant dishonesty. I think it is the way in which these people cheat themselves, with the full approbation or indifference of their creator, which makes them dull, and if you are tedious and dishonest, you may not presume to tragedy.