GET DOWN THERE AND DIE
by Jennifer Lash/Harvester Press 4.50 pounds
pp 189

A Review by Jill Neville
The Sunday Times
1977
 

                       JENNIFER LASH attacks the mystery of suffering with a cool precision.  There is no wallowing here; just one moment of sympathetic concern is following through to its logical conclusion.  A boy waiting for a Tube train, as yet unhardened by habit and self-concern is chilled by a face he sees further down the platform.  It is full of indescribable fear and anguish.  David Carlisle follows this face to see if he can help. . .or something.  He is led to a seedy cafe, an even seedier back-street slum and eventually to the West of Ireland and catharsis.

            Driven by a need to understand fear, not to avoid it, he is dismissed as "mad" by young acquaintances in London.  He tells on enigmatic girl who makes a style out of listlessness "You're afraid of yourself, Camilla, because you are nothing very much to anyone, you are very soon nothing to yourself.  What do you really care about?  Do you really care about anything?"

            Somewhat too pared down, humourless and very unauthentically sexless -- David is a healthy 19 year-old boy -- the book nevertheless conveys mental courage perfectly and the writing is distinguished.  "Florence Regan is staring out through her fine, clean curtains, thinking that it's all a lovely evening and it isn't.  It isn't anything but a coded plague, run through a cassette."