fiction . keeping the beasts in their place . by Nigel Dennis . Angus Wilson , the old men at the zoo . Secker &amp; Warburg , 18 s . our island , it would appear , is too small to allow even for the controlled return of the wolf , the bear and the boar . so says the Times - or rather , Angus Wilson makes the Times say so in his new novel , which is set in London in 1970 . there is no reason to doubt that his sober , careful verdict on the danger of open zoos catches exactly the tone of the Times of 1970 ; but we are left worrying about Mr Wilson himself . he has written the future editorial . he has written the present novel . are they at odds with one another ? the matter is mentioned because the puzzle of Mr Wilson &apos;s new novel is to know clearly what he is saying and where he is standing . this was never a problem in Mr Wilson &apos;s early days . his first books of short stories were as clear as only crystals of poison can be , and the horrors he held up to our inspection were almost too recognisable to be faced . but , since then , Mr Wilson has widened both his medium and his heart . he writes big novels now and expresses his griefs and pains quite openly ; he still has plenty of poison , but he doles it out with a more distressed hand - in brief , he is no longer a pure satirist . one may mourn the change , but one has no right to condemn it . an author should be allowed to change as he pleases : the only test is the quality of the result . the old men at the zoo has much to commend it . it has been written with great feeling and it has some very enjoyable characters in it . it is also a very just book , in that the most absurd characters are allowed their virtues and dignities . even when it is cross , angry and spiteful , it is still a kindly book . the difficulty is to know exactly how to find one &apos;s way about in it . the title suggests that it is about the English masses ( who are the zoo ) and those who govern them ( who are the old men ) . if this is correct , then much of Mr Wilson &apos;s symbolism becomes easy to follow . we see clearly that if the zoo is to be decently conducted , those who govern it must do so unselfishly , intelligently and civilisedly . they must also realise that animals are tricky , even dangerous , beasts , and must not feel sentimental about tarantulas and lynxes . the chiefs of Mr Wilson &apos;s zoo lack most of these qualifications . some of them are idealists - in the sense that they are more obsessed with theories and dreams about animals than they are with actual , living animals . others of them love only those aspects of the animal that suit their professional interests - an extreme ( and witty ) example is the zoo pathologist , who loves animals most when they are dead , dissection being his forte . these persons , let us say , are the department chiefs and top bureaucrats of our society - and under them are the keepers and assistant-keepers who carry out their orders . but above them all are the Secretary and the Director - men of nearly equal power who frame zoo policy and fight over what this policy should be ; these two we may call Prime Minister and leader of the opposition . the clash of policy in Mr Wilson &apos;s novel is over the zoo of the future . the Director hates Regent &apos;s Park : he believes that animals must be given limited liberty and allowed to roam in Whipsnadian reserves . the Secretary thinks this is nonsense . animals , he insists , are best off in the cosy , though somewhat cramped , cages designed for them by the great Victorian , Decimus Burton . all this is most prettily done . Mr Wilson &apos;s descriptions of animals are first-rate - particularly as he is most honest about them , never pretending for a moment that some of them are extremely ugly . and the problems these animals present are perfectly genuine ones : should the wolf , the bear and the boar be allowed considerable liberty , or is the Times right in concluding that they are too dangerous to enjoy such privileges ? this problem becomes acutely personal to every reader when a liberated wolf eats the Director &apos;s daughter . thousands of innocent animals have to pay for the wolf &apos;s indiscretion by being shut up in Regent &apos;s Park again . is this fair ? Mr Wilson does not say whether it is fair or not . and by the end of the book we realise that the puzzles and hypotheses which he presents are honest expressions of his own uncertainty . his intention is not to provide closed answers , but to proffer dozens of open questions . this is unusual and stimulating in theory , but tending to confusion in practice . Mr Wilson &apos;s novel , one feels , would have been remarkably good if he had stuck strictly to the zoo . instead , he has filled out his canvas of the future with a war in which England is invaded and crushed by combined European armies ( Russia and America agree not to intervene ) . he has put in saboteurs , and spies , and politicians , and resistance movements - and by the time he has done he has put in more matter than he can handle and made an artistic clutter of his humane worries . his novel is still a good one - but the careful , precise pen of the former short-story writer could have made his parable shorter , clearer and far more brilliant . people on the move . by Anthony Quinton . Alasdair Clayre , the window , Cape , 16 s . Ivy Compton-Burnett , the mighty and their fall , Gollancz , 16 s . Howard Spring , I met a lady , Collins , 21 s . H D , bid me to live , Grove press , 25 s . for topicality , Alasdair Clayre &apos;s first novel the window would stand out emphatically enough at any time beside this week &apos;s other books ; in the present condition of the world it is almost too much . the central figures are a decent , devout , inarticulate organist in a poor district of Portsmouth , his frigid , respectable wife and their sons , Peter , a trumpet-playing factory worker , and Matthew , a pretty batman whose ambition is to be a butler . also involved are the step-children of the vicarage : James , an elaborately cerebral philosopher , and Anna , a bemused , sensitive pianist . the organist , Matthew and James get caught up , in different ways and with fatal consequences for one of them , in the Easter march of an idealistic organisation . the narrative is developed with great skill and efficiency , the point of view shifting from one of the main characters to another . in its course Mr Clayre conducts his readers on a convincingly authoritative tour of a wide variety of pre-eminently contemporary scenes : an assembly-line , an officers &apos; mess , a jazz club , a left-wing coffee-bar , a deb dance , as well as the march itself . it is an impressively copious image of our society , but its realism has the thinness of a cross-section . the Sands family are not very plausible as a group ; even the accelerated social mobility of our time could hardly accommodate a son like Peter in such a family . James is an Englishman &apos;s idea of a young Frenchman , and Matthew seems to have been transferred from one of Simon Raven &apos;s amazing regiments . there is a fairly sharp line between these and the characters Mr Clayre likes , the organist and Anna for example , who are honoured with a less rigid and political treatment . but this is an able and intelligent book whose limitations reflect the magnitude of its ambitions . the mighty and their fall is absolutely standard Ivy Compton-Burnett , another elegant construction in moral geometry , another variation on her insulated domestic theme with its normal elements of dubious paternity , hidden wills , a despised governess , gnomic servants and Hobbesian toddlers . experts could no doubt identify most of the characters and situations with those of earlier books and even the less initiated can see that this one involves no striking new departures . Miss Compton-Burnett &apos;s curious instrument grates on some ears , but for those who can stand it there is more to be got from it than the incidental felicities to be discovered by brief dippings . her books should be read at a sitting if possible , since the plot and characters are only revealed by the cumulative effect of the dialogue . the centre of this novel is the struggle between a widowed father and his eldest daughter who both resort to deceit , she to prevent his second marriage , he to prevent her inheriting his brother &apos;s money . he has a more impersonal justification in his concern for the continuing welfare of the estate but it gives his response to exposure a more blatant and so more discreditable quality . Miss Compton-Burnett &apos;s vertiginous economies both of technique and material have a charm of their own and there is a fascination in what she manages to do with what is left ; but they also reflect , as much as Racine &apos;s , a judgment of importance , of what really matters in the relations of human beings . Howard Spring &apos;s I met a lady is , predictably and honourably , a thoroughly good read - the whole quarter of a million words of it . a rambling , loose-jointed affair , it seems to be the result of throwing a few human types together at random to see what would come out . the hero escapes from Manchester and cotton with an inheritance that allows him to indulge his pronounced negative capability as a writer of little essays . after a good deal of dithering he marries a nice rich actress and what with her connections and the family of a tycoon who unaccountably becomes his friend he has plenty to look in upon and make harmlessly facetious remarks about . it is a pleasant-spirited , old-fashioned book and pretends to do no more than tell an only mildly engrossing story . H D. &apos;s bid me to live , a small , handsomely-produced volume , is described as a madrigal of war-time love and death in the London of 1917 . it recounts in short , hectic and often verbless sentences the inner life of Julia Ashton , a sensitive American married to Rafe , who spends his leaves in the bed of the girl upstairs . Julia wrongly thinks that Frederick , a red-bearded author of scandalous , volcanic novels married to an ample German aristocrat , is in love with her . the clef of this roman is ready to hand , and it bears the imprint not , as the blurb says , of major literature , but of a major litt&amp;eacute;rateur . in its undisciplined artiness it is of a piece with the odd , vanished world it obliquely describes . in brief . by Felicia Lamb . by the Danube . family jewels by Petru Dumitriu , Collins , 21 s . first part of mighty trilogy about peasants revolting against landed gentry in late 19th- and early 20th-century Rumania . formidable amassing of detail gives interesting picture of Bucharest and Danube plain life . all gentry characters unpleasant , all peasant ones unattractive , but the whole enjoyable once difficult beginning surmounted . a man on the roof by Kathleen Sully , Peter Davies , 15 s . two sprightly elderly ladies try to escape ghost of husband of one of them and recapture youth and freedom in their flight . charming fantasy told with perfect light touch . delightful surprise ending . the silent speaker by Noel Streatfeild , Collins , 16 s . neatly-constructed whydunit . members of unexpected suicide &apos;s last carefree dinner party all dig into her apparently blameless past . skilful maintenance of suspense right up to not-too-unlikely solution . modern rich Londoners well observed . every night and all by William Miller , Blond , 16 s . young Glaswegian on the run from his native slums finds London can mean luxury - at an unpleasant price . convincing Glasgow beginning tails off into forced , happy , socialistic ending , excusable from 27-year-old author . bad characters good , good characters bad . children in love by Moira Verschoyle , Hodder , 15 s . glamorous worldly-wise 17-year-old disrupts backwoods Anglo-Irish family and turns perfect boy-and-girl friendship into unhappy adolescent triangle . tragic ending to a golden summer in well-evoked Irish far west . perfect companion to a box of chocolates . the slap by Marion Friedmann , Longmans , 15 s . grim exploration situation in small South African country town . 