Thankless Child

IT is really pleasant to be able to say, — as Mark Twain said of the weather, — “There is no war, no social problem, in this book.” Time and place are of no great importance. A faint appealing flavor of Balzac and Dickens, an author who is interested in his characters and is fond of them, however grubby some of them are, and a style unflaggingly fresh and pointed, even if a little too labored at times — all this makes one settle back contentedly over a book that in a sense is so old-fashioned as to be quite new.

As for the story, it is a new kind of triangle, consisting of a girl, her father, and her lover. Mordred Snape, a defeated and almost friendless widower given to solitary tippling, concentrates his affections upon Frankie, his pretty and lovable daughter. She falls in love with Lovat Kyle, a young Scottish artist of genius. The resulting conflict of loyalties in all three makes a story which offers a fascinating study of human impulses and motives. R. M. G.