... OJt iis^ Dark Eyes (Strand) Anthony Cookman with Tom Titt THE three Russian bal lerinas are enchanting company. They really refresh the old joke of the comic foreigner. Not only are they as picturesquely absurd as Slavs should be according to our ideas, but their absurdity springs from something recognizably and enviably human a superb zest for life. It is absurdity touched by a kind of wild ...

... THIS week's most attractive and most rewarding book is also one of its briefest: FIN DE SIÈCLE (Allan Wingate. 10s. 6d.). It is a thin and elegant little book, as thin and elegant as the Aubrey Beardsley ladies who decorate its wrap per, and it is a selection of nineteenth-century literature and art, chosen by Mr. Nevile Wallis. Mr. Holbrook Jackson has contributed A Note on the Period, and ...

... Elizabeth Bewetts Charade Shaplon Affairs Turnstile One The Voice of the Corpse lteprints CHARADE (The Bodley Head; 7s. 6 d.) is John Mortimer's first novel-- or is it? I find no reference on the wrapper or first inside page to any other work of fiction by him yet Charade is written with such assurance that it is hard to see Mr. Mortimer as a new comer. Perhaps, however, this signalises ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor Allen U.S. novelists are certainly thorough. Mr. Louis Zara, for example, isn't content merely to portray the first fourteen years or so of his heroine Ruth Middleton (W. H. Allen, 10s. 6d.). He devotes a first chapter to her pre natal growth in biological detail, with running commentary by the parents on progress so far and appropriate Biblical quotation; and I've no ...