THE BOUQUET. By G. B: Stein. (Chapman and Hall.
6d.)-We have all dreamed of a tour in the vineyards of France, but since we cannot all make such an excursion, it is a good thing for us that it was an accomplished novelist such as Miss Stern who went, for she has written a very pleasant book in whose pages -we may travel by proxy over the sacred ground. Miss Stern and her friends (for who could go on a wine tour without friends?) travelled in a large red Fiat, a sort of flaming symbol of their quest for the grape, and they covered, as the map at the end shows us, most of Southern and Central France. Miss Stern, though no crusted expert, knows a good deal about the technical side of her subject, and the book (unlike many literary guide books) should have practical value. We cannot quite pretend that she has succeeded in avoiding the great danger in books of this kind, that is, the danger of affectation. She has not quite resisted the temptation to " write up " her subject, thus quite unnecessarily apologizing for it. After all, alcohol, whether we hate it or love it, is a very important subject, whether we look at it from a personal or from a public point of view, and no one needs any excuse for writing about it.
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