10 JUNE 1911, Page 25

Double Lives. By Francis Gribble. (Eveleigh Nash. Cs.)— Mr. Francis

Gribble frankly puts up a danger signal in the title of his new novel. One thing, and one thing only, is generally meant when people say their neighbours live double lives, and this is exactly what Mr. Gribble means. The whole story is concerned with the hero's entanglement with a variety-theatre actress, dur- ing the course of which the girl he really is in love with makes an unhappy marriage. In the end all goes well. The hero disen- tangles himself from his mistress, and the heroine's husband dies in time for the hero to marry her. There seems no reason, how- ever, why this sort of book should be written. It is certainly a photograph of one sort of life, but surely in literary art as well as in any other it is reasonable to ask oneself whether the subject was worth photographing or not. "Double lives" is a clever photograph, but why should this subject have been taken at all