12 DECEMBER 1903, Page 23

Karen: a Swedish Idyll. By Frances H. Wood. (J. Blackwood

and Co. 3s. 6d.)—Miss Wood's story is interesting in itself, and is made the occasion in the writer's hands of some very curious pictures of life in rural Sweden. Karen, betrothed to a miner, and made by adverse family circumstances to wait long for the fulfilment of her hopes, is a very useful heroine. She has a store of folk-lore which she brings out on occasion, and she is happy, so far at least as we are concerned, in the possession of a grand- mother who is a perfect treasury of superstitions of all kinds. Altogether, this gracious figure of a Swedish maiden, with her chequered experiences, made more agitating by the perilous em- ployment of her lover, serves for the centre of an effective little drama.