BRIGHTON BEACH. By Mrs. Henry Dudeney. (Collins. 7s. 6d.)----The author's
cryptic announcement in her preface that after certain episodes the story moves backwards is calculated to puzzle the reader ; but the puzzlement will be as nothing to his sensations were he to embark on these particular chapters without preparation. Indeed, he would 1L-el that, like the lady in the limerick, the heroine went out one day in a relative way, and returned on the previous night. The explanation of the matter is that the whole contents of Part consist of the delirious dreams of the heroine in an illness, the secret of which the author keeps to the last pages. The heroine, Penelope, after a life of repression starts out at forty years of age to get some of life's enjoyment in the travels which she conducts with the half-hearted aim of meeting the lover of her youth. She does not meet him, but, instead, falls in. love with a man much her junior and with him finally comes back to Brighton, where her youth had been spent. There in a milliner's shop she suffers the shock which sends her mind travelling backward through the years. Mrs: Henry Dudeney's skill in her art is shown by the fact that the most forceful character in the book is " Aunt Mabel," who exists only in Penelope's dream, and that the backward speeding years are more living and actual than the beginning of the story where events move in their customary direction. The- novel is interesting, even absorbing, though the reader; who has felt a distinct sense of giddiness at being hurled backwards through the years, will be rather indignant at being brought up short in the -last chapter and shown that the eArents in which he has been so much interested were merely the hallucinations of Penelope.
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