Miss Johnson is a young English writer who already has produced five novels and who with her "World's End," published early this year, achieved a certain amount of success. The facility with which she writes, combining with the praise she has received (in England there is a disposition to rank her rather highly) seems to have gone to her head. For in her latest ["The Monument"] she has attempted something beyond her powers, and in her youthful overconfidence has even attempted to show off. The result is not merely a failure but a muddle.

Her idea is good enough. It is that of carrying forward simultaneously four separate stories, and of letting them all be seen against a background of the most up-to-date contemporaneousness. Unfortunately we gather the impression that Pamela Johnson's characters are concerned only with Spain and are hardly aware that such a person as Hitler exists. As for the separate stories, each is too unsubstantial to make up, even when combined, a web of sufficient firmness. Good scenes are to be found, but the general effect is vague.