FAR ENOUGH. By Helen Ashton. (Ernest Benn. 7s. 8d.)—Janet Morant
is a refreshing kind of heroine. An inexperienced orphan from a Scots manse, gentle, diffident, awkward, with gold-edged glasses and a nurse's uniform, she comes to Jamaica to care for the children of Nina Campbell, a beautiful creature with coloured blood in her veins, all glamour, extravagance, and hopeless infidelity. The husband, James, who seems at first violent and moody, gradually declares a heart as kind as Janet's, so, when the seductive Nina decides to escape from her complications with a guileless, chivalrous American, the relieved pair settle down to wedded peace at Far Enough, the " pen " with the old-home-like house on the summit of a hill, miles from flagrant Kingston. The timid sweetness of Janet and the tender, piteous courtship of James are the more charming because of the torrid beauty of their surroundings. The colour problem in its many shades and phases is significantly and pietnresquely stated at different points of the story ; and the island of Jamaica, with all its loveliness, fantasy, discomfort, indolences, luxuriances, incandescences, becomes so familiar that we seem to bathe in the jewelled waters, watch the " painted backcloth " of the hills, and sense the ghosts of buccaneers, slave-drivers, and evasive ladies. This is a competent and intelligent novel.
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