The Coining of Sonia, and other Stories. By Mrs. Hamilton
Synge. (T. Fisher Unwin. 6s.)—The interest of this volume of stories depends entirely upon the writer's sympathetic insight into character. The actual framework of the tales is common- place. But the reader forgets the framework, and is constrained to exclaim many times as he reads : "How very true that is!" Sonia's husband, in whom conscience and conventionality have become so inexplicably mingled that he himself no longer knows by what impulse he is moved, is an admirable sketch. So is Miriam, a younger sister, who gives in to the domestic tyranny of an older and stronger woman till she loses all power to rebel, and with it the strength to lay hold on whatever is worth having in life. Again, in "The Husband of Millicent" the drawing of the heroine's personality, ordinary as that personality is, lends distinction to an incident in itself almost absurdly trivial.
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