In many ways Mr. Colin MacInnes's area has always been something one might call the romance of manners. Whether he is exploring London's coloured world, investigating teenage sub-cultures, venturing into Stevenson country or—as he is doing [in Three Years to Play]—re-creating the Elizabethan underworld, the method has been fundamentally the same. Each time an entire section of society, unfamiliar or misunderstood, is given us in authentic and exuberant detail, all its bizarre customs gaily re-enacted. And into this setting he introduces a requisite range of odd, lively, essentially sketchy characters whose unlikely escapades graft fantasy on to historical or sociological fact. Frequently, his shrewd and zestful observation and engaging, farcical humour succeed in passing off the whole thing as truth and insight. Such an impression is surely a mistake. This virtuoso display of unknown worlds is sheer romantic fiction. The weight of minutely bizarre particulars, conjured up in Three Years to Play as racily as before, should strain the credulity of the reader who thinks twice. Mr. MacInnes has also extended elaborate but insubstantial plots at no inconsiderable length, and when something very like boredom intervenes, as in his new novel, the doubts begin to assemble menacingly.
Young Aubrey, just fourteen, is the son of an Epping Forest whore married to a besotted scholar. When his mother dies he ups and goes to London, to seek his sex and his fortune among the punks of the stews and their masters…. Intrigue, plot and counterplot, treason, coney-catching and murder are all there, in a wild, swashbuckling romance which, in its anxiety to miss nothing, far exceeds the lengths to which an ingenious pastiche of this kind was worth taking.
This is a free excerpt of 277 words. There are 410 words (approx.
1 page at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our MacInnes, Colin 1914–1976: Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement Access Pass.
