− N Y Call p11 S 12 ’20 250w
“From no point of view could ‘Interim’ be called easy reading, and a method of sometimes almost ignoring punctuation and printing dialogue in solid pages does not tend to make it any the easier.”
− N Y Times 25:320 Je 20 ’20 550w
“There lies the secret of Miriam’s appeal. Nothing seems to escape her. She is never dull or unaware; she never ceases to live and to respond to stimulus. And thus life, seen through her eyes and felt through her emotions, comes to be an exciting business, and the world an infinite stretch of inexhaustible delights.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p766 D 18 ’19 750w
RICHARDSON, NORVAL. Pagan fire. *$1.75 (1½c) Scribner
20–21002
Anne Rennell was quite contented and happy as the wife of an American politician in Washington. Franklin Rennell, too, was contented as United States senator. He took his work seriously and was of the eternal-boy sort of type, honest and plodding without intellectual brilliance. The first disturbance came when political intrigue put the flea into Anne’s ear that she was cut out for an ambassador’s wife in Rome. Rome it must be, henceforth. Anne feels that she has a right to her own life and happiness and that Franklin’s career must give way to it. In Rome she blossoms out, the romance of it enters her blood and with it an infatuation for Prince Cimino. The latter ends with a night with the Prince at his castle in the Campagna. After that Anne has something to live down, which, the reader trusts, she will be able to do with the aid and the sacrifice of two devoted friends.
“The most human and most logical character in the book is that of Senator Lelong. The story is pleasantly told in the slow analytical style of the English novel.”