31 JULY 1909, Page 23

Fancy O'Brien. By Ella MacMahon. (Chapman and Hall. 6s.)—This is

a powerful but rather unpleasant novel of life in the middle and lower classes in Dublin. Oddly enough, con- sidering this is an Irish story, her usual touches of humour seem to have deserted Miss MacMahon, and the book, besides being unpleasant, is distinctly dreary. The end is, however, extremely powerful, and the accounts of Fancy O'Brien's confession to, and subsequent interviews with, the Redemptorist father are very impressively managed. But it must be confessed that Miss MacMahon's. art is more successful when she writes in a rather lighter vein, though to people who are curious as to the motive forces which underlie life in Ireland the history of Fancy O'Brien cannot fail to be interesting.