The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎102r] (208/244)

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GfRANIA 1
Novels axe published on every side of you. You can as soon hope
to escape from them as from the east wind in spring. But unless I
know what you mean by ' a good novel/ or what you expect to find
in it, I cannot do as you ask and recommend you a novel to read.
Is it a philosophical essay, such as we receive from the Browning
of prose, with its curiously inlaid style, and its mosaic of brilliant
aphorisms, verbal subtleties, and suggestive reflections on human
character ? Is it a dramatic embodiment of a pessimist's creed, inter
preted by the George Eliot of the peasant world with the true power
Of an artist, but revealed in a coarse, grimly realistic form, and steeped
in heavy gloomy colouring ? Is it a highly spiced farrago of fiction,
which lives and moves and has its being in the shambles of civilisation,
and in which there is
Much of crime, and more of sin,
And horror the soul of the plot ?
Is it some mystery of crime, a detective puzzle ingeniously con
structed as a locksmith pieces together a delicate lock, a story
which, when once the secret is revealed, is never read again, and falls
as flat as a conundrum to which you know the answer ? Is it a
fractious mixture of religion and fiction with its
celestes et moeurs souterraines, which seeks to dramatise the results of
Grerman theological thought in a form that admits neither of truth
nor reverence, and endeavours to make the dose of theology more
palatable by the flavour of the slums of Paris ?
If any of these types fulfil your ideal of' a good novel,' do not read
Grania. Miss Lawless does not redress the inequality of the sexes
by proving that though women may not be heard in the congregation
they may yet preach instructive sermons. Nor does she stimulate
curiosity by proposing a riddle, and maintain the interest in her facts
by suggesting a variety of false answers before she gives the true
explanation. Nor does she seek her inspiration in the Old Bailey and
the Divorce Court, or interpret any social creed, or allow her gift of
storytelling to be overpowered by her critical faculty, or make thought
everything and incident nothing. But if you still appreciate the
simplicity, truth, purity, and freshness which constituted the quieter
charm of domestic novels, or if you are not too weary of Irish politics
to be interested in faithful, strong, unconventional pictures of the
1 Grania, the Stony of an Island. By the Hon. Emily Lawless. 2 vols. London
Smith, Elder & Co. 1892.