Ancestral Tablet, K. Wallace, (Heinemann, London, 8/6) BUE
New Fiction The consequences resultant on the bringing home of a Chinese bride by the heir of a quiet English county family are set forth by Neil Woodward in "Off-White" (Murray, London. 7/6). Mr, Woodward has made a realistic sketch of a particular type of well-bred Chinese woman, gracie ous yet very reserved, with a knowledge of the view her own race would take of her marriage that makes her more understanding of the attitude of some of the members of her husband's family than he is himself, But it is with the dificult ties of the only child of the marriage that the book is most concerned—loving the land of his birth and yet feeling himself alien and half drawn towards the East and his mothers people. It is all very pleasantly and sympathetically written, and it is only when in the end Mr. Woodward brings his young hero to China, as a surgeon in a hospital which appears to be far up the Yangtze, that his hitherto lightly sketching pen comes down-—heavily in depicting some quite impossible manners in the local club—but could any novel touching on China be considered complete without this classic malignment?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.