In Fancy's Mirror. By Violet A. Simpson. (Wm. Blackwood and
Sons. 6s.)—Although Miss Violet Simpson has never quite succeeded in reproducing the delicate charm of her first novel, The Bonnet Conspirators, her work is always competent and well executed. Her new book deals with modern life, and is concerned with a family which, if it is distinguished, is peculiar. The usual difficulties which beset the author who wishes to introduce his readers to a large circle of characters have proved rather much for Miss Simpson in the opening chapters. Her characters are confused and difficult to understand, but when their relations to each other are grasped the story becomes simpler reading. The melodramatic scene in which the heroine, Victorine, is nearly murdered in a tunnel is perhaps a little out of place in a novel of manners, but her disappearance from her family owing to her subsequent loss of memory gives the author an opportunity for a curious study of character in the person of the subordinate heroine, Madelon. This exceedingly untidy and provoking young person is not quite so sympathetic a figure as Miss Simpson seems to imagine, but her attitude to her lover, Wykeham, is well conceived and described. The book is a little long for its subject, but the manner is very good indeed —perhaps it ought to be added better than the matter.
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