A LOG ACROSS THE ROAD by Sheila Ross

(Published by Collins and available through Times Distributors at $20).

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The 12-year Communist Emergency provided a wealth of material for writers and subsequently some excellent factual accounts have been produced ranging from Richard Meirs' "Shoot to Kill", an infantryman's eyeview of operations, to Noel Barber's history, "The War of the Running Dogs."

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Strangley [sic], we have not been served so well in fiction. Those dangerous, terrible years have inspired few creations of any lasting value with the arguable exception of Han Suyin's "And The Rain My Drink." 

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Vacuum

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Sheila Ross now helps fill this vacuum with a long, first novel, "A Log Across the Road." In its sweep of history over the years since 1940, the narrative is adventurously planned and although epic in dimension the construction is tight, avoiding excess.

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The story takes us from war-time Britain, through Nazi-occupied Europe to Singapore before the Fall. 

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In post-war Malaya the host of diverse characters are brought together and the complex pattern of their lives is worked out to a highly satisfactory conclusion.

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Sheila Ross handles her characters with skill. She writes a deceptively simple sentence and has a particular ability for invoking atmospheres of the past with a few deft brush strokes.

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Whether it is a war-time pub in London, Singapore with the Japanese knocking on the door, or the awful stillness and lurking threat of a track through a rubber estate, she achieves the feel with stylistic economy.

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Memories

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The story is a good one and it moves along at a brisk pace with moments of genuine excitement. The climax of "A Log Across the Road," which in those days meant only one thing--ambush--is one of the best things in the book.

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Sheila Ross is eminently qualified to write on matters Malayan. Her father was a planter and she escaped from Singapore in the last few days before the British surrender to the Japanese.

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Later she joined the women's forces in Britain returning to Malaya after the war with her soldier husband. Later he joined the Malayan Police Force.

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With this background and a distinctive style and talent for narrative writing, it is a matter for wonder that Sheila Ross has only now written a novel centred on this area.

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Those whose lives were touched by either the war or the Emergency and who read this book will find their chords of memory touched and will agree that this was how it was.

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