CURRENT LITERAT URE.
Joyce Dormer's Story. By Julia Goddard. (Bradbury and Evans.)— Miss Goddard has written many stories, we believe, yet this one leaves on us the impression of being a first effort. If it had been, we should have called it full of promise. The plot is in one way curiously good, the secret being so well kept that the most inveterate novel-reader will be puzzled till the author himself reveals it. We confess honestly that we tried hard to guess Mr. Carmichael's secret, the essence of the plot, and failed ; and yet when the reader knows it, he sees that it has been led up to with some care. There is a deficiency of motive, how- ever, in Mr. Carmichael's hatred, which is the moving power of the story, and all the characters, though originally well conceived, suffer from a touch of exaggeration. Solemn people are not quite so solemn as Mr. Carmichael, or good people quite so conscious as Joyce Dormer, or loving fools quite so blind as "Aunt Lotty." Miss Goddard writes simply, makes clever incidental remarks, e.g., that people dislike their own good sense because it has such a damping effect, and might, we think, write a really good novel. This is quite up to the average.
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