21 OCTOBER 1922, Page 3

The year promises to be rich in fiction. A new

book by Mr. Leonard Merrick—To Tell You the Truth—is an unusual event nowadays. Lilian, by Mr. Arnold Bennett, once more arouses hopes which become fainter and fainter as year by year he fails to approach the excellence of The Old Wires' Tale and Ckryhanger. Anne Serern and the Fieldings is the title of a new novel by that acute and relentless analyst, Miss May Sinclair, and our appetite is whetted by another satire by Miss Rose Macaulay, suggestively entitled Mystery at Genera, and Jacob's Room, by Miss Virginia Woolf, whose curious and original genius has already provoked conflicting opinions. Among books which have already appeared there has been a very remarkable first novel by Mr. William Gerhardi called Futility, and Miss Rebecca West's long promised novel, The Judge, has at last materialized—a striking production, containing some fine work, though as a whole disappointing to those who have expected, and still expect,great things of her. For those who have a taste for best-sellers there is Mr. A. S. M. Hutchison's This Freedom, which, considered from the point of view of style, might have as a sub-title " A Study in Tautology."