The Story of Anna Reamer. By C. A. Dawson Scott.
(W. Heinemann. 6s.)—This is a powerful but sombre story of a woman who, deprived of love for the first thirty-five years of life, succumbs to an unworthy passion, and thereby misses the chance of happiness. The figures both of the heroine, Anna Beames, and of Steve Barclay, the palavering adventurer with whom she falls in love, are well drawn, and perhaps one of the best parts of the
book is the description of Anna's short and unhappy married life. The author has great talent in the description of detail, and the life at the rectory at Whetstone—more like a farmhouse than a rectory—lives before the eyes of the reader as a picture full of light and shadow. When, however, gr. Dawson Scott attempts semi-social scenes, he is not so successful. The ball at Mr. ,and Mrs. Hunter's, and the story of the girl, Ellen Hunter, are not nearly so well given as the country scenes in the book, or as the descriptions of character. Anna's three brothers, two doctors and a clergyman, are admirably drawn, though it must be owned that their absolute hardness of temperament in the end seems incon- sistent, except perhaps in the character of Enoch, the clergyman brother. The whole book is above the average in writing and in intention, and the last scenes have a note of dreary poignancy which leaves a decidedly gloomy impression on the mind of the reader.
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