N Y Evening Post p14 O 23 ’20 520w
MILLIN, SARAH GERTRUDE. Dark river. *$2 (2½c) Seltzer
(Eng ed 20–4268)
Human destinies rather than events form the interest of this South African story. Of the three men and three women that figure in it, John Oliver and René van Reede bungle their lives through defects in character. George Buckle possesses the substantial social virtues that make good in this workaday world and even enable him to take his rebuff in love philosophically. The three women, sisters, untouched by feminism, are more passive instruments in the hands of fate and are reduced to watchful waiting for the right man. Alma’s marriage to George is frustrated through the untimely interference of the flighty René, who goes off and forgets. Hester, feeling youth slipping away from her, marries the regenerate John, to her sorrow. Ruth, the youngest, eventually becomes the happy wife of George, although Alma’s shadow occasionally flits by.
“To read ‘The dark river’ is, after so much wind and brass, to listen to a solo for the viola. Running through the book there is, as it were, a low, troubled throbbing note which never is stilled. Perhaps a novel is never the novel it might have been, but there are certain books which do seem to contain the vision, more or less blurred or more or less clear, of their second selves, of what the author saw before he grasped the difficult pen. ‘The dark river’ is one of these.” K. M.
+ Ath p241 F 20 ’20 380w
“So well does the writer of this story know her South Africa, and more particularly the diggings, that she has not attempted to add the glamour usually found in tales of these regions. In fact, so clearly defined has been her purpose to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ that the story would be rather depressing in its sombreness and worse than drab details were it not enlivened by bits of real humor and by a delightful background of local color.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p10 O 30 ’20 270w
“‘The dark river’ is well written, in a clear and vigorous style, it is interesting, it gives that sense of reality which makes us feel that we are actually observing the lives and fortunes of a group of living people. Moreover, it has the rare quality which distinguished Arnold Bennett’s ‘The old wives’ tale’—it gives an effect of the passing of time. ‘The dark river’ is a notable novel.”