SOME RECENT FICTION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17078, 29 January 1916, Page 12

SOME RECENT FICTION.

"I POSE." Stella Benson's "I Pose" (Macmillan) is an exceptionally clever story, in which the most preposterous and farcically amusing incidents alternate with tho gravest realities. Tho two leading characters are a gaily irresponsible young man, who jocularly styles himself a gardener, as proof of which ho carries about with him, if you please, a nasturtium in a pot called Hilda. The heroine is a militant suffragette, a strange compound of gentle humanity and monomaniacally criminal tendencies. Tills curiously contrasted pair are thrown together by fato, and travel to the West Indies, to Panama and Jamaica, whore, at Kingston, they go through somo trying experiences in tho great earthquake. The sentimentallyinclined reader may expect a happy conclusion to their attachment, but the author is cruel enough to doom the pretty and lovable little heroine to a terrible death as the result of a bombthrowing adventure. The wit and gaiety of the story are undeniable. Its chief fault is a too determined and far .too evident effort to be witty at all times and under all circumstances. Even the cleverest epigram and most ingenious paradox ends by palling upon the reader if tho trick l>e too frequently repeated. A special word of praise is due to local colour of the West Indian scenes. This part of the story is quite uelightful. The suffragette is, as I have said, more to be pitied than blamed. The way in which she confronts and demolishes tho smug self-satisfaction of ner priggish young parson, with his Church Girls' Club and other wellmeant futilities, is delightfully humorous. Altogether a most original and fascinating, although in certain of its incidents and characters, a frankly impossible story.

THE LOST PBINCE. Mrs Hodgson Burnett's latest story, "The Lost Prince" (Hoddier and Stoughton, per Whitcombe and Tombs), should afford unfeigned delight to admires of "T. Tembarom" and "The Secret Garden." It is a story, which should please young and old alike, for although the principal characters are young people there is a strong plot and a fine romantic flavour which should make strong appeal to adult readers. It is the story of a last prmce and a lost cause, the story of the wanderings and curious adventures of the rightful hear to the crown of Samavia, an imaginary State which, by the way, bears a curious resemblance to modern Serbia, though not, of course, to the crushed and helpless Serbia of to-day. Marco, the hero, is a fine, generoushearted, manly, youth, who has been carefully educated and firmly believes in the natural and traditional ideals of his country. The principal scenes are laid inXLondon, where the hero makes acquaintance with a company of young street gamins led by a cripple known as Tlio Bat, a youth of as peculiarly vivid imagination "as that possessed .by the lato°and much lamented Thomas Sawyer, Esq., to boys at least, Mark Twain's most successful creation. From certain games led by The Bat, and participated in by tho prince, originates a great and romantic enterprise, the end of which is worked out in Samavia. It would be unfair to Mrs Burnett to say what happens in that country, but my readers can rest assured that they will follow the story of Marco's experiences in his native land with unfailing interest and pleasure. " The Lost Prince is not only a very pretty, but a very wholesome and fascinating story. THE CBEATER POWER.

"The Greater Power," by Guy Thorno (Galo and Polden, per AMntcombe and Tombs), is a well written, highly sensational story, the hero ot which, a young man about town, oi mixed English and Italian parentage, enters the Italian Secret Service and succeeds in unmasking the treachery of certain highly placed clerical dignitaries of Austrian birth and sympathies. These worthies are discovered to be wirelessing secrgt messages from the great gilded hall under the Cross of St Peter's, and one of Mr Thome s most exciting chapters deals with a desperate fight which occurs between the Secret Service man, assisted by Ins English valet, and one of the traitors high up on the roof of the great cathedral. A capital shilling's worth of sensation.

A BITSSIAN NOVEL. "Mimi's Marriage," by V. Mikoub'tch (P. Fisher TJnwin), is a Bussian novel of a tvpc not very familiar to English readers of Bussian fiction. There is hero nothing of tho Dostoecvskv influence, either in subject or treatment. The author gives us a picture of fashionable Bussian society before the war and a somewhat unpleasant picture it is, although no doubt it is more a picture of a section of society—as were the numberless English novels of two or three years ago, in which the smart set figured so prominently—than of a society or even /a class as a whole. Tlio heroine is a selfish, neurotic voung lady, married to a nuddlen K ed husband with whom' she. has but few tastes or thoughts in common. She to some famous springs in the Caucasus for "a cure," and there meets a, dandified, conceited, but handsome voung lawyer from Odessa, with whom "she imagines herself m love, and to whoso calculating sensuality she falls a willing victim. To her disgust—her vanity being affronted more than any deep affection—the young man, who is himself married and does not desire a

permaniSit liaison which might compromise his professional career, coolly announces ono fine day that hejuust return home, and soon after,tho lady herself departs with her friends back to Petrograd and her elderly husbnnd and resumes her ordinary commonplace existence. That is practically all so far as the story itself is concerned, but where the author secures the interest of her readers is not in her plot—for plot there is practically none to speak of—but by the ironic and almost cynical humour with which sho exposes tho vanity, meanness and shoddy sentiment of the heroine —and hero—and tho cleverness of her character drawing generally. The Russian society lady of to-day is a. vevy different sort of woman from the Mimi or Mimotchka of this story, and Russian fiction of the after war period will do full justice, it is to be hoped, to her splendid patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice. BETTY CRIER, 'Betty Grier," by J. Laing Waucli (W. and R. Chambers, Ltd.), is a pleasantly told story of humble Scottish life and character, the central figure, an old nurse, being a very delightful creation. The story is told by a young Edinburgh lawyer who goes to Betty's rural home for a "rest cure," and while there meets the young lady whom ho marries. Mr Waucli is just as successful in this new story in depicting the. humour and pathos of Scottish country life as he, was in his wellknown " Robbie Poo." Thore aro passages in "Betty Grier" quite equal in their way to tho best of even'Blarrie himself.