20–26325
The story is of a boy, Beach Traill, not clever at books, but of unusual integrity of character, and of his friends. They are all at the same school, three of them, and a fourth has recently been added as a sort of disturbing element. This fourth is Evans, a handsome, intellectual, timid lad, a bit off-caste socially, and somewhat lacking in manly spirit and upstanding courage. Troubles come, partly through bad influence, partly through irrepressible animal spirits, but the boys’ uprightness finds a way out. Beach wins out with his widowed mother and against a suitor of hers whom he detests. Beach and Miles fight it out in fierce battle which rivets their friendship. Palmer, the most clever, subtle and daring of the three, holds his own through his strong sense of justice, and it is in him that Beach eventually discovers, with an exuberant sense of happiness, his real friend.
Ath p338 Mr 12 ’20 500w
“There is no climax in the story, but only the flow of everyday happenings, no progress but the development of the boys’ characters; and the whole is told in a narrative of quiet beauty.”
+ Booklist 16:246 Ap ’20
“Lovers of boys will appreciate the sympathetic understanding of Mr Reid’s portraying. The story gives added pleasure in its descriptions of the countryside and is altogether an artistic delight.”
+ Boston Transcript p4 Ap 7 ’20 360w
“The narrative is of a singular though very quiet beauty—a beauty gained partly by the writer’s marvellous closeness to his subject, partly by his cool tenderness, partly by his sense of the almost pagan interpenetration of nature and the lives of his characters.”
+ Nation 110:305 Mr 6 ’20 260w