Karin Michaëlis has been inspired to write a study of womankind without trying to interpose between her thought and the paper the mind and vision of a man. The outcome is astonishing. I have said that the construction of the novel is solid; but no man could have built it up in that way. It moves to a definite goal by a sure path; yet its style is variable like the ways of every woman, even if she be completely mistress of herself.... Thus her flights of thought, like carrier-pigeons, never fail to reach their end, although at times they circle and hover as though troubled by some mysterious hesitancy or temptation to turn back from their course....
Elsie Lindtner's journal shows us many examples of these circling flights and retrogressions. Sometimes too we observe a gap, an empty space, in which words and ideas seem to have failed. Again, there are sudden leaps from one subject to another, the true thought appearing, notwithstanding, beneath the artificial thought which is written down. Sometimes there comes an abrupt and painful pause, as though somebody walking absent-mindedly along the road found themselves brought up by a yawning cleft....
This cinematograph of feminine thought, stubborn yet disconnected, is to my mind the principal literary merit of the book; more so even than its strength and brevity of style.
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For all these reasons, it seemed to me that The Dangerous Age was worthy to be presented to the public in a French translation. The Revue de Paris also thought it worthy to be published in its pages. I shall be astonished if French readers do not confirm this twofold judgment, offering to this foreign novel the same favourable reception that has already been accorded to it outside its little native land.
Marcel Prévost.
The Dangerous Age
My Dear Lillie,