_Christina's Son_ (WELLS GARDNER) is a disarming book. It overcomes criticism by the direct simplicity of its attack, in which only later do you begin to suspect a concealed art. Miss W. M. LETTS tells a tale that (you might say) has nothing in it; nothing certainly at all sensational or strikingly original. But this story of a middle-class North-country woman grips the attention, and holds it, by some quality hard to define. _Christina_, as wife of a man she can never greatly love, and, later, as mother of a son whom she adores but only half understands, becomes, for all her commonplace environment, a figure that dwells in the memory because of what you feel to be its absolute truth. The atmosphere of the story is so crystal clear that every detail of its chief characters stands out with the distinctness of a landscape after rain. And because, by all the rules, these characters should be so little interesting, and the very provincial society in which the thirty or so years of the book pass is so entirely undistinguished, you are faintly astonished all the way through (at least I was) at not being bored. I see that one critic has praised a previous story by Miss LETTS for its humour, should not have picked this out as a characteristic of _Christina's Son_. Rather has it a certain gravity and sobriety of aim, which in part explains its appeal; if there is humour it is generally below the surface and never insisted upon. There is a moment when its rather restrained style rises suddenly to rare beauty, where the theme is old age; and throughout there is a maturity of judgment in the writing that will make it perhaps less attractive to the young than to those whose outlook has reached the same stage. [Illustration: A FAVOURITE OF THE HALLS WAS GREATLY PLEASED WITH THE NEW POSTER OF HIMSELF----] [Illustration: UNTIL HE CAME TO A HOARDING WHERE THE EXIGENCIES OF SPACE HAD PLAYED HAVOC WITH THE COMPOSITION.] * * * * *