Kind Relations

Liddell, who died two years ago, was a British author and critic who won an enthusiastic critical following for his quiet, understated novels, particularly a trilogy based on his childhood in England, of which this is the first volume. It tells of two small boys, Andrew and Stephen, whose mother dies and whose father, an Army colonel stationed in Egypt, leaves them to be brought up by aunts. There are factions among the aunts, and the boys find themselves the unwitting victims of family passions that run deep beneath the pietistic exterior of a Britain at war with the frightful Boche (the time is 1914-1918). The evocation of middle-class life of the time is absorbing, but the book's chief merit is Liddell's amazing ability to penetrate the childish mind. However remote some of his habits and surroundings may seem to a modern reader, there is something of the brutal honesty and fearful anxiety of any clever, sensitive youngster in Andrew. Liddell's restraint and sly wit (not for nothing was he compared to Jane Austen) perfectly capture the frequent terrors and quick recoveries of growing up. (Dec.)