SUSAN SHANE. By Roger Burlingane. (Heinemann. 'Is. 6d.)—Susan had the
brilliant grasp of practical affairs occasionally exhibited by the children of incompetent parents. Hating the muddle and misery of the poverty-stricken farm which was her home, she vowed herself to the implacable business of money-getting. No enervating weakness of love, she said, should divert her from her ambition. From her _ childhood David Cord, the boy on the next farm, with the sculptor's genius active in his hands, had power to shake her at times • but, as time went on, he became more and more outside her plan of existence. Susan's determined march to success from Glenvil to New York along the path of the catering business provides a story of surprising interest. She has the secret of vitality ; and can hold your attention even when she discusses profits on eggs, though there is a certain trail of hurt things behind her, and sometimes you hate on sight her limited materialist self. This is a first novel ; but the author's mastery of his plot and people is easy and sure. Susan's concentrated figure takes all the high lights ; but the minor characters are all very much alive, though perhaps Bernard Moore, the millionaire whom Susan marries in the end, is a little shadowy. The conclusion of the book, when Susan gains the whole world and loses merely her own soul, is finely managed. Best of all is the protest of the weak forgotten old father, who slips away quietly with his beloved 'lute, and obstinately refuses to come back. It is an absorbing and a human book, with a high development of what the painting critics call " tactile values."
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