_Sussex Gorse_ (NISBET) is a story about the fight between man and nature. It is told by Miss SHEILA KAYE-SMITH with considerable power and a quickening touch of symbolism that lifts it into romance. The ambition of _Reuben Backfield_ was to enlarge the Sussex farm that he had inherited from his easy-going father till its bounds should include a certain coveted moor. The book shows how his entire life was spent in the achievement of this end; how for it he sacrificed his own ease, and the happiness of his brother, his two wives and his many children, and how finally he triumphed, and in his lonely old age, seeing the desired acres all his own, was content. It is a grim book, with only now and then a touch of suggested poetry to save it from being uniformly sordid and depressing. As it is, the long unsparing struggle takes somehow the dignity of an epic. Only one of _Reuben's_ many sons makes any success out of life--_Richard_, who becomes a barrister, and treats his father to occasional visits of curiosity and amused patronage. There is a chapter of cynical humour in which the intolerant contemptuous old rustic is confronted by the art-loving triflers who gather in his son's drawing-room. Otherwise he is alone. "There's no one gone from here as has ever come back!" But I was glad that Miss KAYE-SMITH had the courage to play fair by her hero, and to give him at last his share of the hard bargain. This is only one of many qualities that make _Sussex Gorse_ a novel to be remembered. * * * * *