“Tamarisk town, vulgarly known as Marlingate, was a small Sussex fishing village in 1857 when the story opens. Monypenny determined to make of it a rival to Brighton. And as the years go by, passing the milestones of a new novel by Dickens or another masterpiece from the pen of Mrs Henry Wood, Marlingate gradually turns into Monypenny’s dream—a watering-place of marvellous beauty and refinement. Enter now a woman, Morgan Beckett. They are rivals, Morgan and Marlingate, for Monypenny’s love; there is a contest; Monypenny cannot bring himself to desert the town that he has created. Morgan, in a fit of despair, puts an end to her life, and he, all his love for the town now turned to bitterness, sets himself deliberately to destroy Marlingate.”—Ath
“Miss Kaye-Smith has written an interesting novel in ‘Tamarisk town,’ creating a world that is not exactly realistic, but consistent with itself—an invention rather than a copy.”
+ Ath p832 Ag 29 ’19 180w
“Were Miss Kaye-Smith a painter, we should be inclined to say that we do not feel she has yet made up her mind which it is that she wishes most to paint—whether landscape or portraits. Why should she not be equally at home with both? What is her new novel ‘Tamarisk town’ but an attempt to see them in relation to each other? And yet, in retrospect, there is her town severely and even powerfully painted, and there are her portraits, on the same canvas, and yet so out of it, so separate that the onlooker’s attention is persistently divided—it flies between the two, and is captured by neither.” K. M.
− + Ath p881 S 12 ’19 1200w
“Will be appreciated by those who like good character analysis and atmosphere conveyed by careful detail.”
+ Booklist 16:348 Jl ’20 + Boston Transcript p7 D 17 ’19 600w (Reprinted from Spec 123:622 N 8 ’19)
“Her novel is characteristic of her, but it is thoroughly original and a strongly emotional presentation of the human spirit which seems to be governed wholly by fate. When we have read its last page we feel that Edward Monypenny’s life could have varied at no moment and in no detail from the novelist’s presentation of it.”
+ Boston Transcript p4 My 19 ’20 1500w