Tenement. By John Cockburn. (Blackwood. 7s. 6d. net.) --Readers who
do not know the housing conditions of Glasgow will be surprised by Mr. Cockbum's book. " Tenement ' to the English mind means something rather different from the apartment-house of middle-class flats which he describes. No. 9 Rosedale Avenue, Whiteinch, is inhabited by, among others, a Baptist minister, a commercial traveller, a master builder, &c., and contains only a sprinkling of less well-to-do tenants. The story proper revolves round the master builder and his family, but the author gives us as a side show an interesting gallery of such people as the Baptist minister's and joiner's wives, Grocer M'Innes, Bailie Macfar- lane, and many others. All of them are carefully drawn and add to the reader's knowledge of life and its conditions in Glasgow. As fiction the story suffers a little from disjointed- ness, though the thread of interest in Peter Kerr, his wife and .family, is fairly well maintained.
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