Word: waughs
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HELENA (247 pp.)-Evelyn Waugh-Little, Brown...
...Evelyn Waugh, picking his way through facts and legends, tells Helena's story.† Satirist Waugh has put away his satire this time. The religious theme of Helena runs close to the ruling passion of Waugh's life, his adopted Roman Catholicism-perhaps too close to it. Any man with his heart in his mouth must either blurt the whole thing out or be content to say almost nothing at all. In Helena, Waugh says almost nothing at all about his own feelings, about his characters, or about the religious motives that compelled their lives. Not even...
...Waugh makes no great claims for his new book; he calls it "just something to be read; in fact a legend." Yet there can be little doubt, especially when page after page of Waugh's sky-blue prose goes purple with emotion, that the author intended his legend to be literature-a lovingly wrought story that would take its place in the Christian Apocrypha...
Several times in his writing life-in his study of Jesuit Edmund Campion, in Brideshead Revisited, and now in Helena -Author Waugh has tried to clear the satiric brambles out of his literary field, and to plant in their stead the herb of grace. He has had no very impressive crop so far, but most Waugh readers don't mind. They can be pretty sure another season will bring forth a bucketful of raspberries on the old Waugh briers...
...Waugh follows a 12th Century legend in having Helena born a British princess. The more accepted view: she was born a commoner in Bithynia...