20–2266
“This little book describes the adventures of Angela and the adventures of those with whom she comes in contact while she is caretaker of a small general shop which is also part convent and monastery, part nursing home and college, and wholly a house for those who wish to live alone. She is an out-and-out, thorough witch, a trifle defiant, poor, always hungry, intolerant of cleverness and—radiant.... We have said that ‘Living alone’ is a book about the war. There is an air raid described from below and from above, together with a frightful encounter which Harold has with a German broomstick, and one of the inmates of the house of ‘Living alone’ is Peony, a London girl who is drawing her weekly money as a soldier’s wife—unmarried. The story that Peony tells her fellow-lodger Sarah Brown of how she found the everlasting boy is perhaps the highwater mark of Miss Benson’s book.”—Ath
“We hardly dare to use the thumbmarked phrase, a ‘born writer’; but if it means anything Miss Stella Benson is one.” K. M.
+ Ath p1187 N 14 ’19 440w Booklist 16:203 Mr ’20
“Stella Benson possesses the rarest of attributes among writers—that of personality.” D. L. M.
+ Boston Transcript p4 My 5 ’20 950w
“The particular merit of ‘Living alone’ is that it is a fairy-tale for grown-ups, a piece of whimsical madness without rhyme or reason.” H. S. G.
+ Freeman 1:406 Jl 7 ’20 200w
“No one but a poet could have written ‘Living alone.’ It is Barrie at moments; again it is Chesterton, that preposterously humorous Chesterton of the romances; and, after all, it is Stella Benson. It is a book for the lonely and it is a lesson for the self-conscious. Best of all, it can be read for the sake of the narrative by those who do not care to trouble themselves with allegory.”