The C Major of Life. By Havering Rowdier. (Elkin Mathews.)
—There is no little merit in this novel. The dialogue is always good, sometimes brilliant. There is occasional inspiration in the thought. Arnold, the musician, is a particularly good study of character. Another good figure is Delamarche, the unworldly man who finds a gain in what most men would see but loss. Only one cannot help remembering that the bright prospect on which he looks out, as we leave him, would have but little sun- shine left in it, if there were not health and strength to give it, so to speak, an atmosphere.—Susannah : a Novel By Mary E. Mann. (Henry and Co.) — Susannah, left destitute by her father's loss of fortune, is compelled to take refuge with the very uncon- genial friend who offers her a home. The woman is miserly, spiteful, frantically jealous of any one who may possibly win the heart of a very commonplace son. The heroine finds the place unbearable, leaves it to act as maid-of-all-work in a lodging- house where her brother is living, and finds that she has got from the frying-pan into the fire. This is not the end of her adventures by any means, but we must not pursue her story any further, She is as little like the average " slavey" as may be, and a whale troop of lovers, besides her hostess's son, follows her. Miss Mann tells the tale of her relations with them with much spirit and humour. Perhaps there is a little too much caricature here and there—the figure "Josephine," as the miserly old woman is called, is of the caricature order—but on the whole the characters are sketched with plenty of discrimination and taste. Kerry, the " journeyman actor," as he may be called, is touched with a particularly light and skilful hand.
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