RICHARDS, GRANT.[[2]] Double life. *$1.75 (2c) Dodd
20–18767
Olivia Pemberton was the wife of a semi-commercial, therefore fairly successful novelist. She was all that a wife and mother should be until her two children were away at school, when she became bored and restless. Half apathetically she accompanied her husband to Newmarket one day where he went in quest of racing atmosphere for a new novel. It ended with a tentative, very small and haphazard bet on one of the horses. From now on Olivia secretly takes to reading sporting papers and making greater and greater ventures, even ordering a trainer to buy and train a horse for her. She goes thru all the stages of the gambling fever, sometimes on the verge of a breakdown. Twice her horse wins and when she is dreaming of the triple crown at the Derby with honored publicity to herself, her trainer informs her that the horse is broken down and will race no more. But with her winnings and the sale of the horse, she is enabled to accompany her confession to her husband with a goodly sum of money and her complete renunciation of gambling.
“The technical details will be found interesting even by neophytes, and the whole produces that effect of coherence and facility proper to a practised pen.”
+ Ath p80 Jl 16 ’20 120w N Y Evening Post p10 N 6 ’20 120w
“The book will prove entertaining, but hardly more than that.”
+ − N Y Times p18 D 5 20 460w
“To put it bluntly, Mr Grant Richards is not an artist. ‘Double life’ has some power to please, partly because it conveys double the number of sensations enjoyed in the ordinary routine of life by that never realized type—the average, everyday person.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p401 Je 24 ’20 400w