10 JULY 1926, Page 30

THE TWO SISTERS. By H. E. Bates. (Cape. 75. 6d.)—

As Mr. Edward Garnett tells us in his preface, an element of poetic beauty, due to the elimination of non-essentials, per- vades The Two Sisters, the first novel of a young man of twenty. The author has artistic perception and a sense of the dramatic. He has painted in black and white the lives of Jennie, Tessie and Michael : with a youthful dislike of compromise he has used no half-tones. The tense atmosphere in which this tragic story is enacted is not relaxed for one moment. This is ex- hausting, but it is a fault on the right side.