Would you not have thought that at this date motor-cars had definitely joined umbrellas and mothers-in-law as themes in which no further humour was to be found?  Yet here is Miss JESSIE CHAMPION writing a whole book, The Ramshackle Adventure (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), all about the comical vagaries of a cheap car—­a history that, while it has inevitably its dull moments, has many more that are both amusing and full of a kind of charm that the funny-book too often conspicuously lacks.  I think this must be because almost all the characters are such human and kindly folk, not the lay figures of galvanic farce that one had only too much reason to expect.  For example, the owner of the car is a curate, whose wife is supposed to relate the story, and George has to drive the Bishop in his unreliable machine.  Naturally one anticipates (a little drearily) upsets and ditches and episcopal fury, instead of which—­well, I think I won’t tell you what happens instead, but it is something at once far more probable and pleasant.  I must not forget to mention that the cast also includes a pair of engaging lovers whom eventually the agency of the car unites.  Indeed, to pass over the lady would display on my part the blackest ingratitude, since among her many attractive peculiarities it is expressly mentioned that she (be still, O leaping heart!) reads the letter-press in Punch.

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Mrs. EDITH MARY MOORE has devoted her great abilities to proving in The Blind Marksman (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) how shockingly bad the little god’s shooting became towards the end of last century.  She proves it by the frustrated hopes of Jane, her heroine, who in utter ignorance of life marries a man whose pedestrian attitude of mind is quite unfitted to keep pace with her own passionate and eager hurry of idealism.  She becomes household drudge to a master who cannot even talk the language which she speaks naturally, and discovers in a man she has known all her life the lover she should have married, only to lose him in the European War.  Here you have both Jane and the ineffective husband—­for whom I was sincerely sorry, because he asked so very little of life and didn’t even get that—­badly left, and the case against Cupid looks black.  Mrs. MOORE does what she can for him by blaming our Victorian ancestors and their habits of mind; but I think it is only fair to add that, delightful as Jane is, she was not made for happiness any more than the people who enjoy poor health have it in them to be robust, and that, true as much of the author’s criticism is, she has not been able to give The Blind Marksman, for his future improvement, any very helpful ideas as to how he is to shoot.

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