_The Way Home_, by BASIL KING (METHUEN), describes the spiritual wanderings of a New Yorker, _Charlie Grace_, destined for the ministry; rejecting it, because of his disillusionment through the practice of the professing Christians about him, in favour of a hunt for the money which alone he finds can earn respect; adopting in business the inverted Christian motto, "Down the other fellow before he downs you"; drifting in and out of loves clean and sordid; and finally, broken in health, discovering the way, through the bitterness of a deeper disillusionment, back to an estranged wife; and yet another way to somewhere near the faith of his childhood and the peace of resignation. Barely is so serious a theme treated by a novelist with such simplicity, sincerity and eloquent reticence. Nobody need fear the dulness known as "pi-jaw." The story is full of interest. The characterisation, extraordinarily careful and balanced, is conveyed not only in description but in the cleverly-constructed dialogue. It is part of the author's skill to represent _Hilda_, _Charlie's_ wife, with her charming reserve and dignity, as not a little difficult and exacting, and so to divide our sympathies fairly between the two. There are many other living characters, of which old _Remnant_, the sexton, with his queerly American business notions of religion and dislike of the "riff-raff," is too nicely absurd and human not to have been drawn from life. There is very good stuff indeed in this book, which seems to me in every way an advance upon _The Street Called Straight_. * * * * *