escape the views of the age in which he lives. Lawrence's lack of disapproval of the homosexual relationship of two Arab boys in his entourage may or may not show an inner attitude, but the profound distaste of the early twentieth century for the very word homosexual could easily lead so sensitive a person to abhor any tendency in his own nature in that direction. It is clear that he had opportunity for homosexual expression which he did not make use of. The freer air of our own days does show some advance.

Thomas M. Merritt

RADCLIFFE by David Storey, Coward-McCann, 1964, $4.95, 376 pp.

Radcliffe is the third novel by David Storey. Mr. Storey's first novel was The Sporting Life, which won the Macmillan Fiction Award for 1959 and was made into a motion picture. His second novel, Flight Into Camden, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize for 1960 and the Somerset Maugham Award for 1963.

Radcliffe was first published in England, and received good notices. from critics there. Because of its background, the novel will undoubtedly come to the attention of many readers who might not have heard of it otherwise.

Leonard Radcliffe and Vic Tolson first meet as kids in grammar school. They part when Leonard moves to another school, but they meet again a few years later as young laborers for a tent construction company. There is a strange attraction between Leonard, sickly, intellectual, and Vic. muscular, "working class." Vic wants to dominate Leonard; the author never fully explains why. And although Leonard loves Vic, he feels that there is a "sickness" about their relationship. In the end the reader

one

comes to realize that Leonard and Vic never accept the fact that they are homosexual. Vic is ashamed of his desire for Leonard, and Leonard tries. to avoid any physical contact with Vic. He goes insane trying to convince himself that he does not want Vic sexually as well as intellectually.

The story of Leonard and Vic's work, the story of their families, and the presentation of all other characters are irrelevant and actually damaging to the book. The sub-plot concerning Leonard's family appears trivial yet it takes up half the book.

Mr. Storey has written a novel about two men who love and hate each other, who try to understand themselves and each other. Unfortunately, the handling of their relationship is so subtle, and so much of the story turns out to be irrelevant, that a lot of the point is destroyed. The boring details of the ins-and-outs of three families brought this reader many times to the point of shouting out. One is finally glad when the end comes and Vic forces Leonard to perform fellatio on him with dire results.

English critics have compared Radcliffe with Wuthering Heights in its "obsessive passion," and they have compared Mr. Storey's writing to James Baldwin's for its "power and passion." I will wait with extreme interest the reaction of American readers, especially the homosexual ones. to this novel, because, although it is beautiful in some ways, it is also pointless.

W.E.G.

SEX CRIMES IN HISTORY by R. E. L. Masters and Eduard Lea, The Julian Press, Inc., New York, 1963, pp. 323, $9.50.

One cannot but raise the question as to why this book was written in the first place. And even more why it should be reviewed in ONE Maga-