Katharine Frensham. By Beatrice Harraden. (W. Blackwood and Sons. 6s.)—Although
Miss Harraden is never actually un- readable, it must be confessed that Katharine Frensham is not a particularly convincing book. The characters do not seem alive, and their behaviour is more that of puppets through whos.: lips the author takes the opportunity of airing her views than of real live flesh-and-blood human beings. The hero is particularly unsatisfactory. He is intended to be a romantic and interesting figure, but he is so fond of taking out his emotions to see how they are getting on, as children dig up the seeds in their gardens, that the reader loses all patience with him. Miss Harraden has a decided gift of description, and the chapters in which the action takes place in Norway are pleasant reading, though here one cannot help feeling the fictitious personages rather an interrup- tion to the accounts of the scenery and of the customs of the people, which she gives her readers in very interesting detail. The most successful person in the story is the heroine, from whom it takes its name. Every now and then the reader quite believes in her ; and though Miss Harraden invests her with an occasional touch of commonness, she is in the main an attractive creature. But even she is not often endowed with vitality, and the reader's interest in her is consequently inter- mittent.
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