Coquette. By Frank Swinnerton. (Methuen. 7s. 6d. net.)—It is annoying
that Mr. Swinnerton's new novel should be nothing
better than " a sound commercial article," and at that should have an unsatisfactory end. The book might so very easily have been something much more. The rather elaborate, quick- moving plot is good—or good up to the last half-dozen pages— a great deal of the characterization is sound or even subtle, and the book is by no means ill-written. And yet Mr. Swinnerton has somehow neglected to give his novel those little touches of distinction of whose employment he is so perfectly capable. We are obliged at last to judge it by the magazine standard, to put it in the category at the head of which come 0. Henry's stories.
It is puzzling, as Mr. Swinnerton has obviously taken pains with the book, and so little would have made the story what for want of a better word we must call literary—in the sense that Miss Sheila Kay Smith's novels are literary, for example. The drawing of the central figure, the hard, competent little work-girl without scruples, a' most without a heart, shows a grasp of the theory of psychology as well as a power of observation.
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