13 NOVEMBER 1886, Page 24

A House of Tears an Original Story. (Ward and Downey.)—

This is a dreadful book, a shilling "shocker," which, when once begun, you will almost certainly read to the end, for it is cleverly con- structed and well written. The author knows how to tell a story, and though the plot is grotesque to the last degree and wildly im- possible, it is unquestionably ingenious and probably original. At any rate, though we have heard of people possessing snake-like natures, and Elsie Venner had the imprint of a crotalus round her neck, we never before met with an instance, even in a Wendish legend, of a man with a forked tongue and venom fangs, which, however often they are extracted, grow again in a few months ! Yet such a monster as this is the hero of A House of Tears, and albeit ex- tremely amiable, and as a rule sweet-tempered, he has an unpleasant way, when excited, of flying at his dearest friends and burying his fangs in their flesh. In the end he providentially bites himself and so dies, to the great grief of the narrator, Dr. Emanuel, who is about the greatest nincompoop that ever figured in fiction. Though a physician and a man of the world, he behaves like a hysterical woman, weeps and swoons continually, and when Brabazon, the man- serpent, pats out his tongue at him, he goes off in a dead faint, and does not recover for days. A more appropriate title than the one chosen would be "A Man of Tears and Fears." Nobody with a keen sense of the ridiculous could have written such a story, powerful though it is, and discerning readers will probably be at a loss to decide whether the intention of the author is to make their flesh creep with his horrors, or amuse himself at their expense.