Annora. By the Author of My Trivial Life and Misfortune.
(William Blackwood and Sons. 6s.)—They are great folk, for the most part, who move through the pages of this "story of the nineteenth century "—the Marquess of Westshire, and the Carcesters, and the not insignificant members of the Jervoise family. And there is nothing false or strained about the writer's portrayal of character or about the plot of his book : simply, there is not enough of either. The men and women of a novel must needs be more intimate and more individual than these pleasant puppets, if we are not to grow restless at watching them merely sit down to eat and drink and rise up to play : as a costume drama, it might all be condensed into one act. We are troubled also by a certain self-consciousness on the part of the author, who parades before us his unfamiliar costumes and old-fashioned manners with all the delight of a child in dressing-up. "I have allowed the old Lord to swear in my book," he says in a preface, although the " old Lord " uses no oath more startling than " dame." Yet there is a leisurely dignity about .Annora which is pleasant to us, and the story, what there is of it, wisely takes its time, and unfolds itself with a Victorian love of detail admirably suited to the wealthy idleness of its personages.
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