+ − Review 2:208 F 28 ’20 380w R of Rs 61:445 Ap ’20 50w
“Besides being a woman of invincible courage and executive ability, as her work in Switzerland proved, Mrs Whitehouse shows in her book that she has a sense of humor and pleasing ability as a writer.”
+ Springf’d Republican p8 Ap 8 ’20 300w
“In a delightfully straightforward style Mrs Whitehouse has told the story of her work in Switzerland.”
+ Wis Lib Bul 16:120 Je ’20 80w
WHITELEY, OPAL STANLEY. Story of Opal (Eng title, Diary of Opal Whiteley). il $2 (2c) Atlantic monthly press
20–19873
This “Journal of an understanding heart” (Sub-title) is the diary of an orphan, brought up in a lumber camp, and is ascribed to the end of her sixth and to her seventh year. Before her adoption by strange people she evidently had a careful bringing up and careful instruction from a loving mother, as the outpourings of her childish heart and bits of her history reveal. The records are remarkable for the deep and loving insight into nature and the child’s communion with animal and plant life, which they reveal. Parts of the diary have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.
“We have no space to pursue our analysis into details. An amateur Sherlock Holmes will find much of interest in this volume. For instance, is the vocabulary consistent? Is the idiom consistent? Is the ignorance consistent? For the rest, and in spite of Earl Grey’s ‘sheer delight’ in the book, we find it flat, dreary, utterly uninteresting, a reductio ad absurdum of, as we have hinted, the American sentimental novel.” J. W. N. S.