ROOFS OFF. .- By :Riehmal Crompton. • • (Hodder and
Stoughton. :7S-6d,)--When -Martin Evestiam, fifty, childless, and four months a'widower, giVes up busineks;sells hottse in Golder's Green,j'and settles in a- new garden suburb near London, his relatives take his action to reflect grief at his wife's death. Actually, howeVer, Martin.is rejoicing in_ emancipa- tion, for before he had married ,thedonainating Mary,..who had turned him into a tame and successful business man, he had been a dreamer, with a taste for poetry and architecture. His adventures at Mallings,-the recently opened " estate," include the promise of a romance-that is not-fulfilled. But his story merely gives Miss Crompton a pretext for taking the " roofs off " a number of houses in the garden suburb, and revealing to us the secrettragedies and comedies of their varied inhabi- tants. She is often a caricaturist. But truth always underlies her exaggeration, and the book displays her characteristic observation and humour.
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