Memoirs of a Dance Hall Romeo

The abrasively sentimental (and apparently autobiographical) narrative concerns Oliver Shaw, an eager young soldier just out of the British army in 1949 and ready for action of a different kind. " . . . and so," begins the novel, "I decided to devote myself exclusively to the pursuit of women." In this case, it's a fairly trivial pursuit--although Shaw vividly recalls his first time (in fact, his first seven times), the women are an undistinguished, coldly depicted lot--mostly coarse, hard-bitten and insensitive, their unifying characteristic and saving grace seems to be willingness. Between liaisons, Higgins works in a subplot about Shaw's experiences as a schoolteacher and resuscitates a score of postwar cliches. Shaw is also an aspiring novelist, but this self-portrait of the artist as a young stud suggests a fairly mediocre future for him.