ARAB INTERLUDE By Clare Sheridan In the village of M'cid,
on the fringe of the Sahara, lived Mrs. Sheridan and her two children for eight years. Ali the mason slowly built her a house after her design. In time they ceased, to be strangers and settled into the village life, making friends and a few enemies. The record of these years (Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 15s.) suffers from lack of form; occasionally the dilatory Arab spirit seems to-enter into the book, especially in the early chapters ; and sometimes her style is careless. But she writes nu whenever her sympathies are engaged, when she deScribes a village wedding, and the terrified, helpless little bride, or the sufferings which the seclusion of women entails. • She builds up a picture ; we see the dazzling exterior of this desert village, and the darkness within. She takes us into the four walls where - the Arab woman lives her life. She unravels for us the complexities _ of village quarrels. The total effect of this book, which ends with an account of Gandhi, of whom she made a statue, and of the Stavisky riots, whicli she thoroughly enjoyed, is rather like that of a diary.
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