THE DARK ISLAND—V. Sackville-West —Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). Civilized man has seldom made God in the image of a woman; she ranks high but not highest in his holy hierarchy. In practice, however, the private shrines of even heterodox moderns are as apt to contain less as a god. In The Dark Island Author Sackville-West has enshrined such a figure. To masculine readers her goddess will seem a human but incomprehensible creature; women will recognize in her a gynecomorphic ideal.
Shirin (pronounced "Sheereen") was the child of a respectable middle-class home in a London suburb. From...