Ardina Doran. By Susan Christian. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 6s.)—Miss
Christian can hardly think much of her story, and, indeed, it does not attract. She seeks, it would seem, to set it off by an ambitious style. It would not be difficult to name the novelist whose pattern she seeks to imitate. It is a difficult and dangerous task, something like what the young scholar attempts when he writes Tacitean prose. Sometimes we are fairly puzzled. What can be meant, for instance, when we are told that "a man stood within the expanse of window frame, and his hands were on the window ledge, and the weight of his body was supported on his wrists." After this we are not surprised that "the leaves were near and friendly things among the creeping shadows." All this about window frames and ledges and incom- prehensible attitudes is supposed to be realism. To us it seems very unreal.
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