WATCH THE NORTH WIND RISE

Turning away momentarily from poetry and the historical novel (I, Claudius, King Jesus, The White Goddess, etc.) Graves does some delightful conjecturing on the future, in a fantasy which brings to mind many another, having points of contact with Brave New World, Gulliver's Travels, Alice in Wonderland, Rasselas, and even the recent The Green Child. He introduces the New Cretons, now assembling around the poet and hero, Edward Venn-Thomas, who has been summoned from the so-called late Christian Epoch for consultation about it. Edward finds "this somewhere-nowhere place" befuddling and difficult to adjust to with its embodiment of pure good in the Goddess who can appear in any form and who has replaced God, with its Nymphs-of-the-Month (one of whom he loves), with its friendly one-day wars, with its custom of rebirth, its refusal to use money, its indifference to ambition and lack of modern machinery. Divided into five estates and working on a division of labor scheme, the New Creton society represents the Good Life that is until the displeased Goddess detects stagnation therein and allows the Northwind to rise at the bidding of Edward....An engaging, inventive, often vitriolic stab at what can happen to a well-regulated, status quo Paradise, and a surprise for Graves' followers.