I think BEATRICE GRIMSHAW tortures overmuch her tough bronzed Australian hero, who “could fight his weight in wild cats,” and her beautiful slender heroine, “daughter of castles, descendant of crusaders.”  First the twain fall desperately in love, and Edith, the Catholic, discovers Ben to be an innocent divorce.  Marriage impossible, they part.  But it is apparently quite in order for her to marry, without loving, a cocoa king who drinks—­anything but cocoa; which done, to add to the bitterness of the cup, Ben’s wife is reported dead.  Whereafter the king in a drunken fit poisons himself, and the widow, fearing to be suspect, flies with her big Ben to his secret Nobody’s Island (HURST AND BLACKETT), off the New Guinea coast, where they live comfortably off ambergris.  Eventually tracked down by the dead king’s brother, who allows himself to be persuaded of Edith’s innocence on what seems to me the most inadequate evidence, the lovers, after protracted mental agonies and physical dangers, are about to enjoy deserved peace when Ben’s wife turns up again, necessitating further separation; till finally Edith, with a handsome babe and the news that after all Ben’s first wife wasn’t a wife at all, finds her way back to Nobody’s Island.  Now that does seem to be rather overdoing it.  But I hasten to credit the writer with a very happy gift of description, which brings the Papuan forests and mountains (or something plausibly like them) vividly before the reader, while the characters, including a boy villain ingenuously bizarre, are amusing puppets capably manipulated.

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Mrs. BARNES-GRUNDY possesses a wonderful supply of sprightly humour. Her Mad Month (HUTCHINSON) is funny without being flippant, and although the heroine is very naughty she is never naughty enough to shock her creator’s unhyphened namesake.  Perhaps Charmian’s exploits in escaping from a severe grandmother, and going unchaperoned to Harrogate (where a very pretty piece of philandering ensued), do not amount to much when seriously considered, but it is one of Mrs. BARNES-GRUNDY’S strong points that you cannot take her seriously.  I am on her side all the time when she is giving me light comedy, but when she leaves that vein and bathes her heroine in tears I cannot conjure up any real sympathy.  I never for a moment doubted that Charmian’s lover, though reported as having “died from wounds,” would turn up again.  I am afraid the War is responsible for a great deal of rather obvious fiction.

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