THE ODYSSEY OF A NICE GIRL. By Ruth Suckow. (Cape.
7s. 6d. net.)-The impulse of realism has not yet expended itself in fiction. Miss Ruth Suckow is one of its latest adherents, and she has written two very good, sensitive drab histories of ordinary life. Her second novel, The Odyssey of a Nice Girl, is better than Country People. The interest is more capably engaged ; for the whole illumination is focussed upon one character, and we live with her with a peculiar, detailed intensity. The heroine, Marjorie, is the daughter of a small shopkeeper. She is quick-minded and full of ambition for independence, and we watch her progress in purity of taste and in insight. But she never has sufficient force to break with her environment completely. In spite of her promise, in the end she settles down to an ordinary existence, merely a little better in opportunity and enjoyment than the hundreds of frustrated lives around her.
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