I have found in _Lighting-up Time_ (COBDEN-SANDERSON) that all too rare thing, a theatrical novel of which the vitality does not expire towards the end of the fourth chapter. Obviously Mr. IVOR BROWN knows the life of modern stageland, one would say, with the intimacy of personal experience. More important still, he commands an easy style and a flow of genial, not too esoteric, humour that combine to keep the reader chuckling and curious to the last page. His title is characteristic, _Lighting-up Time_ symbolising here that period in the career of an actress when her possibly waning attractions need the illumination of a judicious boom. The two main characters are _Mary Maroon_, the leading lady, and _Peter Penruddock_, the astute publicity agent who engages to set her upon her financial and artistic pedestal. _Peter_, in other words, is _Mary's_ tide, taken at the flood in chapter one, and leading her, very divertingly, on to fortune. Both the tour of _Stolen or Strayed_ and the company that present it are admirably true to life, while Mr. BROWN has even been able convincingly to suggest the atmosphere of theatrical Oxford, when in due course his mummers descend upon that home of lost comedies and impossible revues. If I have a complaint against the book it is that a tale of such pleasant irony hardly needed the general pairing-off with which the author rings down his curtain; but for this Noah's Ark I should have more easily believed in a story that entertained me throughout. * * * * *