Anna Colquhoun. By Katharine Burdekin. (John Lane. 7s. 6d. net.)—Novels
in which the principal character is a genius are often both unconvincing and tedious, but an exception may be made for Katharine Burdekin's study of Anna Colquhoun, who becomes a pianoforte virtuoso. The character of the girl is carefully built up point by point with a distinctly interesting result. The only false note is struck in the account of Anna's marriage to an artist, Cohn Kinnaird, who is intended to be a typical example of the dominating male. It is very difficult to believe in him, and still more difficult to beieve that Anna, however strongly her feelings were engaged, would have knuckled under completely as a submissive wife. This part of the novel is decidedly conventional, and, though the disaster at the end may be necessary for the development of Anna's character, a motor accident is always an arbitrary way of producing a desired situation. The author hints in the last chapter that the book is not a sequel, but an introductory volume to one which has already appeared. Most readers will take sufficient interest in the heroine to wish that Miss Burdekin had told us where Anna's further adventures are to be found.
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