ve
about a group of young persons, brothers and a girl-friend, who live
at Herne Hill, attend King's College and talk (oh, but interminably)
the worst pamphlet-talk of the pre-war age. It is, I take it, a
reviewer's job to stifle his boredom and push on resolutely through
the dust to find what good, if any, may be hidden by it. I will admit
therefore some vague interest in the record of how the War hit such
persons as these. Also (to the credit of the author as tale-teller)
she does allow one of the young men to earn a scholarship, and for
no sane reason to depart instantly thereupon before the mast of a
sailing-ship; also another, the central figure, to fall in love
with the girl. The book is in three parts, of which the third is
superfluously specialized as "chaos." Whether Miss JAMESON will yet
write a story I am unable to say; I rather wonder, however, that
Messrs. HEINEMANN did not suggest to her that these heterogeneous
pages would furnish excellent material for the experiment.

* * * * *

I have discovered that Miss PEGGY WEBLING has quite a remarkable
talent for making ordinary places and people seem improbable. She
achieves this in _Comedy Corner_ (HUTCHINSON) by sketching in her
scenery quite competently and then allowing her characters to live
lives, amongst it, so fraught with coincidence, so swayed by the most
unlikely impulses, that a small draper's shop, a West End "Hattery"
and an almshouse for old actresses become the most extraordinary
places on earth, where anything might happen and nobody would be
surprised. _Winnie_, her heroine, behaves more improbably than anyone
else, but she is such a dear little goose that most amiable readers
will be quite glad that she doesn't have to suffer as much as such
geese would if they existed in real life. You can see from this that
it is one of those books that are full of real niceness and goodwill,
and it has besides plenty of plot and lots of interesting characters,
and yet somehow it gives you the feeling of being out of focus. You
read on, expecting every moment that clever Miss WEBLING will give
things a little push in the right direction and make them seem true,
and, while you are reading and hoping, you come to the happy ending.

* * * * *

Should you enter _The Gates of Tien T'ze_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) you
will not regret it, but it is possible that you may be--as I was--a
little breathless