"In talking of flying, Boillot only returned to a pastime that he had been one of the first to practise."—Pall Mall Gazette.
Just like our Mr. Billing.
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Miss Pandora (Heinemann) is proclaimed by its publishers to be a first novel. Probably, however, it will not also be a last, as the author, M. E. Norman, has a considerable gift for tale-telling. Perhaps I may be permitted to hope that he (or she) will use it next time to illuminate a rather more attractive set of characters. I don't think that the circle in which Pandora moved contains a single person whom I should wish to meet twice. There was Pandora herself, who was dark and Spanish-looking, with an origin wrapped in mild mystery. There was her friend, a futile lady-novelist; there were three quite disagreeable men, a spoilt child and an old lady suffering from senile dementia. Oh, and I nearly forgot the sniffy neighbour, who, having cut Pandora dead for half the book, was revealed in the second half as her mother. Add to this that Pandora had a past (and a present too, for that matter) with the husband of the lady novelist, and you will, I think, agree with me that they were a queer lot. Also I have seldom read a novel with such an unsatisfactory ending. It almost seemed as though M. E. Norman, having got the affair into a tangle, was too bored to unravel it. I am by no means sure, for example, that he (or she) had any clearer ideas about Pandora's paternity than I have. The depressing conclusion is that, while I readily admit that the writing of it shows originality and promise, Miss Pandora is hardly the novel I should have expected to be produced in a paper famine.