The author of _The Dop Doctor_, with her expansive style, always seems cramped in any story of under a couple of hundred thousand words or so. Perhaps the best things in her new book of short stories, _Earth to Earth_ (HEINEMANN), concern _The Macwaugh_, a shocking bad artist with an immense thirst and the heftiest of Scotch accents. I don't think that there ever was or could be anybody like _Macwaugh_, or indeed that people talk or act like the majority of the characters in this book; but that's where, perhaps, "RICHARD DEHAN" scores a point or two off those realists who mistake accuracy of detail for art. This amiable drunkard, though absurd, lives and moves. The author is evidently attached to him, and that helps. She has, indeed, something of the Dickensian exuberance which carries off absurdities and crudities that would otherwise be intolerably tiresome. She even seems to get some fun out of this kind of thing:--"'Write,' commanded the Zanouka with a double-barrelled flash of her great eyes;" or, again, "It's all poppycock and bumblepuppy," meaning, just, it isn't true. * * * * * If you are writing or intending to write a book about boys let me beg you not to follow the prevailing fashion and call your hero David. Within the last few weeks I have read DAVID PENSTEPHEN, DAVID BLAISE, and now it is Miss ELEANOR PORTER'S _Just David_ (CONSTABLE) and I am beginning to want a rest from the name. _David III._, if he may be called so, has saved me from utter confusion of mind by being an American product and having a charm that is peculiarly his own. Cynics indeed may find his perfection a little cloying, and may say with some justification that no human child ever radiated so much joy and happiness. All the same, this simple tale of childhood will appeal irresistibly to those who do not draw too fine a distinction between sentiment and sentimentality. On the whole Miss PORTER, although hovering near the border, does not pass into the swamps of sloppiness, and as an antidote to War fiction I can recommend _Just David_ without any further qualification. * * * * *