Three Against the World. By Sheila Kaye-Smith. (Chap- man and
Hall. 6e.)—There is no need to recommend Miss Kaye-Smith: she has made for herself already a name and a disceniinF, if not large, circle of friends. But we cannot pass over her latest novel without appreciation. She is modern, new in thought and plot and sentiment, and yet she is ever herself, with her peculiar power of adapting her back- ground to her figures, adjusting the moods of Nature and of loan; so, when shame and siiffering are crowding close upon the three, "little curls of blue, dream-scented smoke were drifting up against the sky. Men were burning the tangles of their summer garden, they were piling into the flame those trailing sweets, now dead. For autumn was here and winter Was at hand, and ,a few dead things that mist be burnt were all that remained of June." But Miss Kaye-Smith's best piece of work is nearer to comedy than to tragedy ; ebe has painted nothing so cleverly as the portrbit of the schoolgirl Tony, with the fine intolerance and the Schwiirmerei peculiar to her age and sex ; if this is typical of the writer's power to make us smile, we will gladly dispense with some of our luxurious sighs. We would suggest to her, by the way, that it is a mistake to date her books so narrowly, as by the reference to the Crippen case.
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