POLITICS AND LOVE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18629, 9 February 1924, Page 4 (Supplement)

POLITICS AND LOVE.

AN UP-TO-DATE NOVEL. A purposeful modern novel dealing with the activities of a middle-class woman in the Labour movement, "Silhouette, ' by A. M. Allen (Chapman and Dodd, London), should stir curiosity and win keen appreciation. The story concerns one. *Miss Lee Howard, a woman of taste, grace and capacity, who has thrown herself into the Labour movement. She is sincere and undeniably useful to the movement, but not always acceptable to the wilder spirits. She has friends who have led hard, unhappy lives friends who • were born with silver spoons in their mouths. There is loyalty and steadfastness in both camps; also jealousy and aloofness in both. She looks her breeding, but feels and lives for the working women. Her appearance and social habits bring her in contact with men whose ideas are alien to hers. Thus love is shut out of her life till late, when she meets and marries one Lord Fowell, a capable man of affairs who sees and appreciates her point of view, and whose outlook on life she can grasp and approve. It is an interesting story, well told, and the characters aro living people drawn with a faithful touch. Apart from Miss Lee Howard herself, there in one Anna Greenways, a working woman, sterling and selfless, and another Pearl Smith, blatant, ignorant, assertive. The characters in the more fortunate world of wealth and comfort are more sketch ily drawn, except Lord Fowell, who has capacity for any business undertaking and sufficient symlathy and understanding to bring him to ove Miss Lee Howard, and to appreciate and admire the vehement loyalty of Anna Greenways. The others of his class are people with stereotyped habits of thought, quite like Miss Lee Howard in silhouette but quite unlike her in personality and purpose. "Silhouette" is a book "worth reading. It is written by a woman and has two qualities seldom found in women's books about the modern feminine movement hats balance and it has Ibamoup,