ABSTRACT
Mr Gissing's last volume is much slighter, both in conception and in execution, than In the Year ofJubilee, which we had occasion to notice two months ago. It is to be hoped that he is not going the way of so many writers, and producing too rapidly for his own reputation. Nevertheless, although inferior to his greatest work, Eve's Ransom is a strong and impressive story, and one that holds the attention of the reader to the end. The principal male character is a young mechanical draughtsman from the Black Country, who works from morning to night for a meagre salary of two pounds a week, and with nothing to relieve the monotony of existence. Becoming unexpectedly possessed ofa few hundred pounds, he resolves, as he says, at any rate for a few months, to discover how it feels really to live, so that he may at least have something to remember in after years. He casts aside his work and rushes up to London, visits Paris, and plunges into various forms of distractions, but at first in utter loneliness. At this stage ofhis career, he makes the acquaintance of a more or less attractive young woman, who, like himself: has led a narrow, provincial life, and longs for a glimpse ofthe world ofluxury. It is easy to see to what end one ofthe decadent school of fiction would have conducted this affair; but Mr Gissing, though pessimistic, is no decadent. His heroine is very unconventional, but nothing worse. The book deals largely with the development in the man of a perfectly unselfish affection, and with the conflict in the woman between unselfishness and motives that are mercenary. The latter are made to win. The psychology ofEve Madeley is a very curious study, and perhaps involves a certain amount ofparadox; but the analysis is carried out very convincingly by Mr Gissing, and the book on the whole will detract nothing from his reputation.
