FICTION.
'.1.11.E. ROUGH CROSSING.* Ix the narrower sense of the word Miss Thompson has not written a novel. In this she has shown her good sense, and here lies the defence of her book. For if it had to be judged as an ordinary novel—that is, as a book which depends for its right to exist on its story, its delineation of character, its exposi- tion of humanity, &o.—it would undoubtedly be a second-rate, though perhaps a clever, book. But Miss Thompson has been well advised enough to avoid this and to write of the one thing she really can know about—the sensations of a girl in her teens. She gives us no inevitably tiresome " story " of impossible incidents, but simply a perfectly plain, straightforward account of a girl growing up, depending for its interest solely on the accuracy of the observation—would it be fair to call it the introspection ?—at each stage of develop- ment. This, of course, means-that whenever the introspection fails, whenever a false note is struck and a stagey, unreal girl is shown instead of the reality, the book breaks down utterly and becomes a hopelessly trivial, incompetent, and causeless production, since it has no interest of plot -or characterization to fall back on. But luckily these " let downs " are not frequent, and almost all occur towards the beginning of the volume, when the author is describing childhood, which she remembers lees well, and is apt to let the sentimental, conventional view of what a child is like creep in and blot out her recollections. In the second half of the book, on the other hand, when she is describing her heroine's life at school, we are continually being interested by an obviously true exposition of what a girl is like. Like most truth, it is so very far from being " stranger than fiction," that the moment it is stated we see at once that it is the only thing that could possibly be. Miss Thompson has at any rate attempted to set down sincerely what the feelings of a growing girl are, and that in itself is sufficient apology for her novel.
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