Almost as claustrophobic, but mercifully shorter, The Burial is a first novel told mainly in interior monologue by Dilla who also has problems. These would appear to stem from overhearing in childhood a quarrel between her drunken father and her mother who was on the verge of a breakdown from which she never recovers. "I felt strong then", Dilla's mother cries, referring to a previous row, "strong enough to suffer with almost stimulation." As a result, I suspect, of the trauma inflicted by this prose, Dilla drowns her favourite doll, thus laying down the pattern for her life.
The
Burial is a humourless little book full of tissue-paper people
who rustle across the threshold of Dilla's awareness all talking in identical
voices. What saves it is the author's eye for trivia: cows
walking in rump procession, children pouring out of the classroom like
vegetables out of a sack, to take two examples at random. Time and
again we are pricked into delight by her freshness of observation.
If, having got The Burial off her chest, Miss Lash would now listen to
the way people really talk, and give her characters the same loving attention
that she lavishes on the small change of life, she might well write a refreshing
and memorable novel.