[In Full House, M. J. Farrell] has deserted her Irish fox-hunting and fishing for satirical characterization blended with a psychopathic and exceedingly sympathetic study of inherited insanity. For a comparatively young writer this was undoubtedly an ambitious and hazardous undertaking, and one can understand why she elected to make a clean sweep of her former literary stock-in-trade. She has kept Ireland as the scene of her drama, but she treats it as a somewhat negligible background, instead of as the breath and life of the book.

It is true that some of the most satisfyingly beautiful passages are scenic … but they are subordinated to the moods and tragedies of the characters, with which they are usually made to correspond….

Has M. J. Farrell justified her desertion? In venturing satire she necessarily challenges comparison with older writers who have made the same sort of ineptitude, selfishness and silliness their...