It seems to me that Mr. FRANCIS BRETT-YOUNG has done quite a distinguished piece of work in _Deep Sea_ (SECKER). I have not cared to miss a paragraph of it and have certainly carried away an unusually vivid memory of that unnamed West-country fishing-town which he has so cleverly peopled with his creatures--with poor, simple, introspective _Jeffrey Kenar_, fisherman that was, looking at life through the oddly refracting medium of his window of old glass, and all but seeing visions; comely, bitter _Nesta_, his wife; simple, loyal _Reuben_, _Jeffrey's_ friend, whose rejection of _Nesta Kenar's_ overmastering passion turns her love to hate; _Reuben's_ gentle wife, _Ruth_; and that sleek mortgagee, _Silley_, for whom men like _Reuben_ toil that he may grow fat, nominally owning their vessels, actually in heavy bondage to their shrewd exacting masters. There are dark and deep waters of passion swirling in and out of these simple lives, and the author, whose method is broadly impressionist rather than meticulously realistic, contrives cleverly to suggest that what he imagines has in fact been closely observed. He can make and tell a story and he can marshal words with a certain magic. The tragedy ends peacefully with the resolution of the too bitter discord of _Nesta's_ hate in love of the child of the man she had wrongfully and vainly desired. A book to be read. * * * * * Amongst the makers of what might be called, without in this case any disparagement, the commercial short story, I think I should place Mr. P. G. WODEHOUSE as easily my favourite. The comfortable anticipation that is always mine on observing his name on the contents page of a popular magazine has been renewed by the sight of it attached to a collection of tales in volume form and called, after the first of them, _The Man Upstairs_ (METHUEN). You must not expect a detailed criticism. All I can promise you is that, if you are a Wodehouseite, you will find here the author at his delightful best. He is winged and doth range. The heroes of these tales include (I quote from the cover) "a barber, a gardener, a play-writer, a tramp, a waiter, a golfer, a stockbroker, a butler, a bank clerk, an assistant master at a private school, a Peer's son and a Knight of the Round Table." So there you are; and, if you don't see what you want in the window, you must be hard to please. Personally, I fancy I would give my vote for the play-writing stories. "_Experientia_," as _Mrs. Micawber's_ late father used to observe, "_does it_"; and here I have the feeling that the author is upon tried ground. But not one of the collection will bore you; there is about them all too nice a deftness, too happy a gift of phrase. I am told by the publishers that the American public fully shares my approval of this engaging craftsman. It shows their sense. But, if there is any threat of removing Mr. WODEHOUSE permanently to the other side of