The Other Sen. By Ella Macmahon. (Chapman and Hall. 68.)
—Miss Macmahon is always at her best when depicting the quiet everyday life of upper-class cosmopolitan English society, and for this reason her present story does not display her talents quite so unmistakably as some of her earlier works. The scenes of the book which show her hero in Algeria as a non-commis- sioned officer in the Tirailleurs are not drawn with the author's usual assurance of touch, and are therefore not entirely con- vincing. Readers of fiction are apt also to feel rather uncomfort- able when a hero falls in love with the daughter of the woman for whom he has cherished a hopeless affection in the first chapters. But in spite of these little defects, The Other Son is a very readable novel, with one excellently drawn character, that of Mrs. Palliser, the grandmother of the heroine. Miss Macmahon, as she has shown us in other books, is a past-mistress in the art of portraying the clever elderly women who, though they are in fiction, as in life, subordinate characters, yet contrive to exert
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