e a. delightful half-hour to all those readers who -read
fiction simply, for relaxation. The story contains a. very pretty love affair, some excellent farce, and more than one melodramatic =idea, so handled as to be neither too unlikely,.too horrible, nor at all ridiculous. The whole thing is both entertaining and dramatic ; neither incident nor dialogue drags for an instant. We think Mrs. Sidgwick would have done well to make her little plays into short stories, and her long story into a little play.
The Housewives of Edenrise. By Florence Popham.. (W. Heine- mann: 6s.)—This is not exactly a novel, it is a series of sketches. Edenrise is a village within an hour of London. The housewives of whom we read are women of the upper 'middle class, who live in comf'' ortable houses in pretty gardens surrounding the village. green. Most of their menfolk go to London every day. We hear about the doctor's wife, who is silly and domestic; about the curate's sister, Wbo is intellectual and a bore; and about Mit. Welwyn, who dOes not get on with her literary husband, and kind Mrs. Manners, who has seven children, and yet finds time to get on with every one. The character round whom • most of -the little incidents are grouped is Mrs. Greenlaw, a pretty woman about whom no one knows anything except that she is living apart from Mr. Greenlaw. How she charms and shocks the society in which she ids herself is cleverly told._ A flavour:of. cynieifsm which per? vades the whole book will please or repel the reader according to his or her taste. For our own part, we think that such a very slight dish as Mrs. Popham offers for her readers' consumption should be somewhat sweeter.
Previous page
