FICTION
FROM -MAN TO MAN. By Olive Schreiner. (Fisher Unwin. 75. (Id. net.)—The late Olive Schreiner was so well known as a pioneer among feminists, and one of great depth of emotion as well as of wisdom, that it seems natural to find her novel—written long ago but unfinished—dealing with the woman question. The book treats of two sisters, one miserable in marriage and the other still more wretched io free unions. Miss Schreiner charges man, implicitly, with oast iniquities. But her propaganda is sincere, and nothing that she alleges against any of her male characters but is Perfectly true even to-day in many cases. Less perfect and unified than this author's The Story of an African Farm, it has nevertheless passages of heroic quality. The description of the unhappy sister's residence in London with
strange, kindly old Jew whose part-mistress part-adopted chIld she is, burns through the pages with sudden genius. "le more decorous sister's actual discovery of her husband's contemptible Infidelities is lit, too, with many brilliant flashes.
Here, however, the author's own earnestness sometimes defeats its own ends, for she interpolates long discussions, letters and monologues where the meaning she wishes to conyey could have been dramatized in actions and reactions. But even the tedious parts of the long book demand admiration, while the vivid portions are incomparable.
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