The Eternal Priestess. By Putnam Weale. (Methuen and Co. 6s.)—There
are very few novels written about China. It is so easy to create a pseudo-Japanese "atmosphere" with geisha and cherry-blossom. so difficult to make a Chinese setting at all convincing without an accurate knowledge of the country. This knowledge Mr. Weale possesses : he writes. of the actual scenery, of the men and women, of all the eternal problems of colour and of progress, in a way which makes it impossible for us to doubt that he knows what he is talking about. His types are apparently drawn at random— the objectionable fast American, the Chinese conservative, the human drift and failures of Europe, the infinitely pathetic Yao girls, with their Eastern life and Western education, the narrowness of the white man and the crudeness of the yellow. All this goes to make a book of the greatest interest : where the writer is lacking is just in those qualities which are essential to a novelist. His style is stilted, and he is so much occupied with the intricacies and secrecies of Chinese business and political enterprise that he commits the unpardonable crime of bewildering the reader out of all ability to follow the plot. Nevertheless he attains, here and there, to real drama, as in the thrilling scene in the temple.
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