SERGEANT, ELIZABETH SHEPLEY. Shadow-shapes; the journal of a wounded woman, October 1918–May 1919. *$2 Houghton 940.48
20–20217
In this record of her hospital experiences the writer attempts to envisage “a vast, embracing, unseizable truth that was essentially our common possession. The heightened glow cast by danger and death on the faces of the young, and its fading into the rather flat daylight of survival; the psychological dislocation of armistice; the weariness of reconstruction; the shift in Franco-American relations that followed President Wilson’s intervention in European affairs; and the place of American women in the adventures of the A. E. F.” (Preface) The three parts of the book are: The wing of death; Pax in bello; The city of confusion.
+ Booklist 17:149 Ja ’21
“It is, indeed, amazing that Miss Sergeant is able to make her meagre details of vivid interest, but such is her art that she ably succeeds in holding attention throughout the pages of this novel journal.” C. K. H.
+ Boston Transcript p8 D 1 ’20 390w
“The book derives a unity from its synthesis of fragments—a shade too clinical at times, but otherwise sharply realistic and delicately expressed.”
+ Dial 70:232 F ’21 50w + Freeman 2:501 F 2 ’21 200w
“Books so concentrated, so vivid, and so sustained in their spiritual excitement rarely get written.”