20–23027
When Fred Wootten marries a beautiful young wife and brings her home to South Africa he surprises all his friends, not least of them George and Maud Allerton. Mrs Allerton welcomes the bride and does all in her power to make her happy in her new home. But neither she nor the hapless husband is aware of the sudden passion that awakens between George Allerton and Gerda Wootten and up to the moment of flight both are unaware of what is impending. George and Gerda go to England. Wootten is willing to set his wife free but for the sake of her children Maud refuses to consider divorce. Eventually Gerda comes to feel the guilt of her action and sends George from her. The title is taken from a Chinese proverb, “Almonds come to those who have no teeth.”
“The book is smoothly written, but it has no especial charm of style, nor any particular quality either of discernment or of drama to freshen its more than well-worn plot. The proofreading is strikingly careless.”
+ − N Y Times p26 S 12 ’20 150w Spec 124:729 My 29 ’20 30w
“She has given George Allerton’s wife sterling qualities and then wasted them all. The author, in fact, has taken throughout the book a low view of love, and love has spread his wings and flown away. We have seldom found so little love in a book which contained so much talk of it. Being what it is, however, it is a well-told story.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p271 Ap 29 ’20 470w
YOUNG, FRANCIS BRETT. Poems, 1916–1918. *$2 Dutton 821
20–9079
“This book contains poems which appeared in Mr Brett Young’s first volume of verse, ‘Five degrees south.’ But there is a large number of new poems.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup p718 D 4 ’19) “Mr Brett Young’s finer poems are of two kinds—reverie and fantasy. Both are in the nature of dreams; the one a brooding on love or beauty, a scene, a memory; the other on adventure, heathenish maybe, and magical, of the imagination.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup p779 D 25 ’19)