FUTILITY. * The reading of a book like Futility is something
of an event to the jaded reviewer, for it is compact of the freshness and charm of youth. Yet a delightful sense of humour in its author never allows this youthful gusto to become either pompous or sentimental. It is a sort of half humorous imitation of the Russian novel, but, though it exaggerates and caricatures the features of that type of literature, it is yet often a non. satiric version, and it sometimes gives occasion for a real wielding of Russian tools by an Anglicized hand to English ends. We feel as we read its delightfully ironic pages that somewhat so would the young Miss Austen have written had Tolstoy, Tourgenief and Chekov been her early fare instead of the imitators of Rousseau and Mrs. Radoliffe's pasteboard mysteries in gingerbread castles.
Mr. Gerhardi is to be congratulated on a most intelligent book. Of course, it is not faultless ; indeed, let dyspepsia warp the critic's judgment for a moment and he will sea stretched before him a row of pitfalls into each of which Mr. Gerhardi tumbles, but, if he observes a little more closely, he will see that the pitfalls are all traps for inexperience and lack of technique, and that the book proves Mr. Gerhardi's possession of almost all the qualities necessary to a writer. It is a first book which is not only promising, but in itself thoroughly amusing and deliglatfuL
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