“The plot of ‘Hagar’s hoard’ is unconvincing as regards its chief motive. Then, too, the characters are sadly stock-in-trade. Even the negroes are grossly machine-made and lack warmth and conviction, and the author certainly has overlooked a fine opportunity to add color and the throb of life to a fairly interesting tale.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p21 O 23 ’20 320w
“Mr Turner has unfortunately made a full-length novel out of what should have been a long short story, or at most, a novelette. The plot is of the very slightest. The merit of the book lies in its excellent description of the fever-stricken town, but excellent as this is it becomes wearisome when repeated again and again.”
+ − N Y Times p23 O 24 ’20 700w
TURNER, JOHN HASTINGS. Place in the world. *$1.75 Scribner
20–3578
“The heroine of ‘A place in the world,’ Iris Iranova, is an illegitimate and temperamental young woman of about twenty-five. Married to an over-amiable Russian, she lost her temper and stuck a knife into him. This inconsiderate action made it necessary for her to leave Russia and come to England, where she is living very comfortably when the book opens. Following a whim, she decides to settle for a time in an English suburb, and it is with her relations with the persons she meets there that the novel is principally concerned. Among these persons two are of especial importance—a really charming old clergyman, broad-minded, sympathetic and possessed of a keen and abundant sense of humor, and Henry Cumbers, an apparently fussy and insignificant little man who, in time of stress and sorrow, proves that he has splendid stuff in him.”—N Y Times
“Mr Turner has a clever pen, and the fluttering of the dovecotes caused by Iris’s unconventionality gives him scope for a number of incisive character-sketches. Mr Turner is to be congratulated on the keenness of his observation as well as the liveliness of his style.”
+ Ath p127 Ja 23 ’20 100w