The Truth about Camilla. By Gertrude Hall. (William Heinemann. 6s.)—If,
as the title-page seems to indicate, The Truth about Camilla is really a first novel, the reader may well expect great things of Miss Hall in the future. The book shows a breadth of design, and a power of workmanship in carrying out the design, which are seldom found in the writing of a novice, and if the personages of the story are somewhat lacking in the power to move sympathy the author would be justified in saying that the character of the heroine made this essential, and that she is as well aware of the fact as anyone. Camilla herself is Italian, and the scene of the whole book is laid in Italy. That the story is long may be gathered from the fact that Camilla is eight or nine years old in the first chapter and that the reader does not take leave of her till she has attained the ripe age of fifty. During this long period Miss Hall paints a consistent portrait of her heroine as a perfectly cold-blooded, self- sufficient person, who is at the same time so efficient and so desirous of excelling that she assumes all the virtues which she has not. Indeed, the author's apologia in the last chapter contains the final word which can be said upon the subject : "As the ambition to be in all things, always, admirable, is itself admirable, so the desire to appear invariably superior, splendid, is far from ignoble. Low natures never attempt it." But though Camilla throughout never deviates from the path of egotism, the author is clever enough to stop short of rendering her repellent. Besides this a delightful sense of humour brightens every one of the three hundred and ninety closely printed pages of the book. Possibly on the other hand, there is not one which will excite very high emotion or sympathy with the characters of the story—indeed the only really pleasant person in the book is a bull terrier called Boss Brady—but the whole volume is a highly polished and careful piece of work which it is impossible to read without a great deal of pleasure. Miss Hall's future will be a matter of considerable interest to the inveterate novel-reader. If she can keep up to the standard set in the book before us she will be a real addition to the ranks of contemporary makers of fiction.
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