The story of a boy’s school and college life, and his first contacts with the outer world. Peter’s father sends him to Phillips Exeter with the vague intention of giving him a gentleman’s education. The two years in this school are followed by four at Harvard and the story traces the quiet unsensational development of his mind and character. He makes friends, is converted to Carverism—the economic creed of a popular professor, and in his junior year meets Joan, a Radcliffe student. Peter and Joan are married the year after his graduation. They set up housekeeping in a New York tenement and work and play together and test out their theories of life. The story ends with the birth and death of their child.
“Unluckily there is not quite enough ‘to him’ to command and hold our interest and concern at the exacted pitch.” H. W. Boynton
+ − Bookm 51:343 My ’20 120w − Dial 68:537 Ap ’20 50w
“The reader possessed of sufficient pertinacity to work his way through the first two hundred pages of ‘Peter Kindred’ will find in the last part of the book a realistic sketch of youthful theories and ideals at war with the economic facts of life.”
− + N Y Times 25:50 Ja 25 ’20 300w
“The story is well thought out and well written. Mr Nathan has put a great deal into his work and has taken it seriously. That in itself is more than can be said for many writers of current fiction.”
+ Outlook 124:479 Mr 17 ’20 240w
“The boy is a tolerably nice boy, and he does and thinks and says the things a tolerably nice boy would. We do not deny that he is true to fact. But what of it? Who cares? Since the author has failed to make us care about him as a person?” H. W. Boynton
+ − Review 2:392 Ap 17 ’20 900w