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NARKA, THE NIHILIST.
By Kathleen O'meara. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00.
"The scenes and incidents of Miss O'Meara's tale are purely Russian, and the time is the present period of which Tolstoī treats. Naturally they suggest the marvellously realistic pictures of the author of 'Anna Karénina,' although it would be very unjust to the younger novelist to compare her work with his. Tolstoī is always introspective; he deals rather with character than with the incidents which develop character. 'Narka' portrays an involved and ingenious complication of events which hold the interest of the absorbed reader until the end is reached. Tolstoī's stories, even when he has a story to tell, are simply the intuitive outgrowth of the thoughts and actions of the real men and women he draws. His dramatis personæ make his plots, while Miss O'Meara's plots, on the other hand, make her men and women.... Narka Larik, a low-born Russian Jewess, is a peculiar product of Russian soil and of autocratic Russian rule. She is possessed of a beautiful person, a glorious voice, and a strong moral and mental constitution; she is suspicious, as all Muscovites are, a thorough and consistent hater, a devoted friend, truthful to a degree; and she calmly swears on the holy image of the blessed St. Nicholas to an utter falsehood in order to screen her lover and to aid his cause.... The scenes are laid among that curious mixture of Oriental magnificence and barbaric discomfort, of lavish expenditure and shabby makeshift, to be found in a Russian castle, with its splendid vastness, the immensity of its grounds, the immensity of the forests on all sides of it, and the general scale of immensity on which everything about it, and within it, is invariably conducted. Add to these Russian prisons, Paris salons, French convents, the lyric stage at Milan, Socialists, Nihilists, priests, patriots, and vivisectionists, and it will readily be seen how strong and effective a story can be made by a woman so gifted in the telling of stories, the weaving of plots, and the study of character as Miss O'Meara has already proved herself to be. Narka Larik is a better woman morally than Anna Karénina, intellectually she is the superior of Katia, and she is quite worthy to stand by the side of these two illustrious countrywomen of hers as the exponent of all that is true and womanly in modern Russian life."
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H. RIDER HAGGARD'S STORIES.
There are color, splendor, and passion everywhere; action in abundance; constant variety and absorbing interest. Mr. Haggard does not err on the side of niggardliness; he is only too affluent in description and ornament.... There is a largeness, a freshness, and a strength about him which are full of promise and encouragement, the more since he has placed himself so unmistakably on the romantic side of fiction; that is, on the side of truth and permanent value.... He is already one of the foremost modern romance writers.—N.Y. World.
Mr. Haggard has a genius, not to say a great talent, for story-telling.... That he should have a large circle of readers in England and this country, where so many are trying to tell stories with no stories to tell, is a healthy sign, in that it shows that the love of fiction, pure and simple, is as strong as it was in the days of Dickens and Thackeray and Scott, the older days of Smollett and Fielding, and the old, old days of Le Sage and Cervantes.—N. Y. Mail and Express.