Domestic Life in Rumania. By Dorothea Kirke. (J. Lane. 5s.
net.) —The writer of this volume on a country that is unfamiliar to most of us, though its name is upon the lips of all, has evidently been there, and also to Constantinople, of which there is some account. Unfortunately she has put her impressions in the form of letters from a girl who takes the position of nursery-governess in a Jewish bourgeois family, and there runs through the whole a superfluous romance with her correspondent; there is also tiresome reference to the flirtations of her colleague, the French governess. There is no hint as to the date at which the sojourn was made or the book written, except that Abdul-Hamid was on the throne when "La Nurse" visited Turkey. It is very light and superficial, but naturally of interest to-day, and the reader can get a good deal of information as well as the " atmo- sphere " that Miss Kirke is at pains to convey. The accounts are not flattering on the whole to the Roumanians; but it must be remembered that the writer did not see Bucharest or Sinaia from the home of a real Roumanian family. The book is illustrated with photographs.
Previous page
