• The Vrouw Grobelaar's Leading Cases. By Perceval Gibbon. (W.
Blackwood and Sons. 6s.)—Mr. Perceval Gibbon has found virgin soil, which he is tilling to much profit. His "Souls in Bondage" showed a remarkable insight into the half-caste world which lives around the doors of civilisation in South Africa. In his new volume of tales he deals with the back-world of Boer superstition, the kind of story we may believe to be told round winter fires on lonely farms. The Vrouw Grobelaar, the narrator, will capture the affections of every reader with her shrewd common-sense, her sharp tongue and. trenchant philosophy of life. In the main, the atmosphere is correctly reproduced, though now and than there is a touch of alien sentiment; and, to one familiar with the life of the veld, some of the details are wrong or too obviously "got up" for the occasion. The tales them- selves range over every variety of subject, from the idyllic to the purely horrible. Some are familiar—one is as old as the Greeks— but all show a certain originality of treatment, and Mr. Gibbon is an adept at a narration in character. "The King of the Baboons" is a gruesome version of a well-known South African legend, and "Piet Nande's Trek" is another which, though probably invented by Mr. Gibbon, fits perfectly into the psychology of the Great Trek. For sheer power, perhaps the best are "The Sacrifice" and " Vasco's Sweetheart," while the "Avenger of Blood" might be a transcript from the history of several Boer families. In a homelier vein, "A Good End" and "Her Own Story" are excellent. Altogether, it is a collection to be heartily commended, for to most readers it will open up a new world, and the style and method are those of the true artist in fiction.
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