This novel of English school life was written some three years ago when the author was barely past seventeen. It is a boy’s criticism of the English public school, its emphasis on sports at the expense of scholarship, its lack of mental discipline, its low standard of morals, and the dull formalism of its teaching, written while these matters were fresh in mind. Midway in his school course Gordon Caruthers accidentally discovers the delights of English poetry and Byron, Swinburne and Rossetti influence his development. The story is carried into the first years of the war and the author shows how school life was affected by outward events. For one thing, the glamor was stripped from athleticism and school sports.
“He has not ranted. He has not preached. But he has spoken the truth as it appeared to him, swiftly, unalterably. It must remain, I think, for a long time, as one of the few remarkable records of school life which this generation or any generation has furnished.” D. L. M.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Ag 7 ’20 1050w
“‘The loom of youth’ is apt to bore American readers because the viewpoint is annoying, and the action and dialogue not sufficient to stimulate reading.”
− + Cath World 111:693 Ag ’20 380w
“There are very definite signs of youth in the minuteness of detail in all matters and in the exhaustive descriptions of cricket and football matches, but the writing on the whole is astonishingly mature.”
+ − Ind 104:66 O 9 ’20 280w
“What is fresh in the book is its clear insight into the morality of the boys, especially in their relations with the masters and its objective projection of its complex and busy scene.”
+ Nation 110:625 My 8 ’20 300w