THE WAY THINGS ARE By E. M. Delafield. (Hutchin- son.
7s. 6d. net.)—A minor Victorian poet once observed of his household, " In my family the domestic virtues have, run to seed." The same may be said of Laura Temple, Miss Delafield's heroine, who allows the minor cares of this life to preoccupy her to the exclusion of all other interest& Every unsuccessful and pertinacious housekeeper 'should. be made to read this book as an awful warning of what too, Martha-113m an attitude can produce in an intelligent female.
The mistake in the novel is that the -reader is hard put 'to it to believe in Laura's success as a writer of short stories. However, as readers of Miss Delafield will readily believe, Laura's worries are distinctly entertaining, and the account of her inconclusive and rather futile love affair is most con- vincingly given. The minor characters all make themselves exceedingly unpleasant in their different Manners. This is a thoroughly entertaining novel.
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