Modernism, crude but interesting, is the basis of Mrs. Sheridan's
essay in a new field of artistic expression. We pay her the compliment of taking her seriously as a novelist when we say that she has not complete mastery of a technique which is strange to her. Therefore, although she gives a convincing objective picture of her characters and their doings, she fails to convey to her readers an intelligible account of the mental processes which underlie their actions. Stella, the heroine, offspring—deliberately evoked—of a half-crazy Irish father and a Russian mother, is almost too irresponsible to be interesting. The story of her connexion with the Irish revolutionaries ends in tragedy so poignant as to be intolerable. All this, however, is only a preface to the section of the hook which deals with Stella's life among Russian refugees in Berlin. Mrs. Sheridan knows what she is talking about when she describes the Russian temperament and the interminable arguments which make "days out of the nights, and half nights out of the days." She is perhaps wise not to have allowed her heroine to reach Moscow—although she obtains a visa to her passport. Mrs. Sheridan's habit of plain speaking might have created an awkward situation in the description of the Bolshevist regime. The book, though not a great novel, is well worth reading for its vivid descriptions, not to speak of the strange adventures through which the heroine passes.
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