What most interfered with my peace of mind over _The Happy Highways_ (HEINEMANN) was, I think, its almost entire absence of highway, and the exceedingly unhappy nature of its confused and uncharted lanes. Indeed, I am wondering now if the title may not have been an instance of bitter irony on the part of Miss STORM JAMESON. Certainly a more formless mass of writing never within my experience masqueraded as a novel. There are ideas and reflections--these last mostly angry and vaguely socialistic--and here and there glimpses of illusory narrative about a group of young persons, brothers and a girl-friend, who live at Herne Hill, attend King's College and talk (oh, but interminably) the worst pamphlet-talk of the pre-war age. It is, I take it, a reviewer's job to stifle his boredom and push on resolutely through the dust to find what good, if any, may be hidden by it. I will admit therefore some vague interest in the record of how the War hit such persons as these. Also (to the credit of the author as tale-teller) she does allow one of the young men to earn a scholarship, and for no sane reason to depart instantly thereupon before the mast of a sailing-ship; also another, the central figure, to fall in love with the girl. The book is in three parts, of which the third is superfluously specialized as "chaos." Whether Miss JAMESON will yet write a story I am unable to say; I rather wonder, however, that Messrs. HEINEMANN did not suggest to her that these heterogeneous pages would furnish excellent material for the experiment. * * * * * I have discovered that Miss PEGGY WEBLING has quite a remarkable talent for making ordinary places and people seem improbable. She achieves this in _Comedy Corner_ (HUTCHINSON) by sketching in her scenery quite competently and then allowing her characters to live lives, amongst it, so fraught with coincidence, so swayed by the most unlikely impulses, that a small draper's shop, a West End "Hattery" and an almshouse for old actresses become the most extraordinary places on earth, where anything might happen and nobody would be surprised. _Winnie_, her heroine, behaves more improbably than anyone else, but she is such a dear little goose that most amiable readers will be quite glad that she doesn't have to suffer as much as such geese would if they existed in real life. You can see from this that it is one of those books that are full of real niceness and goodwill, and it has besides plenty of plot and lots of interesting characters, and yet somehow it gives you the feeling of being out of focus. You read on, expecting every moment that clever Miss WEBLING will give things a little push in the right direction and make them seem true, and, while you are reading and hoping, you come to the happy ending. * * * * *