Olive Latham. By E. L. Voynich. (W. Heinemann. Cs.)— The
reader has no business to complain that this novel is excessively dreary when he considers that the heroine is engaged to a consumptive Nihilist, whom she nurses through pleurisy till he is carried off to die by the Russian police. Granted the plot, the dreariness is a necessary consequence. But what may legitimately be complained of is the extremely unsympathetic character of the heroine, and the astoundingly brutal and un- grateful way in which she treats her own family. Olive Latham is intended to have what is called a "fine character," but as a matter of fact she is even more completely self-centred than the frivolous sister, whom the reader is expected to despise. The Nihilist lover is a shadow, and the real hero of the story, a Polish doctor, also a Nihilist, is the only attractive person in it The scenes laid in Russia are undoubtedly powerful, and tits
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