ok, _The Questing Beast_
(SECKER), I think that Miss IVY LOW makes two serious mistakes. "Tell her,"
writes the heroine to a friend after the first of two irregular love
affairs, "that I thought, 'I am not that kind of girl,' and tell her that
there is no 'sort of girl,' and that life is a sea and human beings must
catch hold of life-buoys to keep them afloat." To this it may be answered,
however, that there _is_ "that kind of girl," and that _Rachel Cohen was_
"that kind of girl," and that it is a kind which deliberately rejects
life-buoys when flung out to them. The second mistake, as it seems to me,
in a novel which is in many ways a very clever piece of realism, is a
strong feminist or, at any rate, anti-masculine bias. Against the cunning
dissection of the character of _Charles Giddey_, a worthless and conceited
egotist, I have no complaint to make. It is one of the best things of its
kind that I have read for a long time. But it seems unlikely, to say the
least, that the heroine, after being deserted by the man she really loves,
should, considering her very erotic and unprincipled temperament, find
complete happiness in the publication of a successful novel and in devotion
to her child. I feel that on a nature like that of _Rachel Cohen_ even
Royalties and Press notices would eventually pall. And in pausing I may
remark that the beast _Glatisant_ cuts a very episodic and unsatisfactory
figure in the _Morte D'Arthur_. Pursued for a short while by _Sir
Palamides_ in his Paynim days, it scarcely comes into the cognisance of
KING ARTHUR'S Court and the Table Round. And I fancy that the circulating
libraries will feel the same about "_The Questing Beast_."

* * * * *

I do not think that I can recall any novel that makes such insistent
demands upon the weather as does Miss JOAN SUTHERLAND'S _Cophetua's Son_
(MILLS AND BOON). The sun, the rain, the wind, the snow--these are from the
first page to the last at their intensest, wildest, brightest, most
furious, and as I closed the book and looked out upon a day of monotonous
drizzle I thanked Heaven for the English climate. But I imagine that Miss
SUTHERLAND was aware that nothing but the most vigorous of climatic
conditions would afford a true background for her hero's tempestuous soul.
_Lucien de Guise_ was unfortunate enough to be the son of a flower-girl,
and I had no idea, until Miss SUTHERLAND made it plain to me, how terrible
his frien