The Two Kisses and A Crooked Mile. By Oliver Onions.
(Methuen and Co. 6s. each.) — Although The Two Kisses was published in the autumn and A Crooked Mile has only recently appeared, the two books are as certainly Volumes L and II. of the same novel as though they bore the same title. In The Two Kisses Mr. Onions gives an intimate picture of artistic semi-Bohemian society. His two heroines, Amory Towers and Dorothy Lennard, are both artists, but there is a great difference in their artistic powers. Amory is repre- sented as having the root of the matter in her, and being capable of painting great pictures; while Dorothy is possessed of much business intelligence, and is engaged first in drawing for a small printer and afterwards in the fashion department of a huge ladies' emporium. Indeed, the most amusing part of either novel is the description in the earlier one of Halliwell and Smith's very modern establishment, where Dorothy draws fashions and later on devises new and daring schemes of advertisement. Her great idea of a " Wedding Week" has actually been taken up lately by a well-established but go-ahead firm, which, however, does not carry out the scheme as completely as is done in the book. The second volume of the two, A Crooked Mile, is a descrip- tion of Amory's and Dorothy's marriages, and the picture of Amory as Mrs. Cosimo Pratt is not at all agreeable. After some years of marriage she uses her husband's money to conduct a newspaper of advanced views in order that she may at the same time attempt to have an intrigue with the editor, who, it may be added, is anything but willing. It must be said that Mr. Onions when writing of suburban life inevitably reminds the reader of a Nasmyth hammer cracking the traditional nut; but unfortunately the author, unlike the hammer, hardly succeeds in adapting his extremely vigorous method to these trivial uses. Admirers of his former works, and especially of the great series dealing with a murder and its punishment, recently reviewed in these columns, cannot help regretting that he should waste his time on material like this.
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