+ Spec 122:177 F 7 ’20 400w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p718 D 4 ’19 30w + − The Times [London] Lit Sup p779 D 25 ’19 900w
YOUNG, FRANCIS BRETT. Young physician. *$2.50 Dutton
20–8520
“This story proceeds by definite stages. First of all we have the boy in the English public school. We find him suffering keenly from the roughness and cruelty of public school life. His own escape from this torment is in his dreams. He confides these dreams to his mother and she responds with an understanding which tightened the bond between them. After his mother has died, Edwin’s father has a period of poignant self-revelation. He takes Edwin on a bicycle trip to the country where his boyhood was spent. His father uses rather undue influence in persuading him to give up his chosen career in order to study medicine. It is easy to understand that the father longs to see his own personal ambitions fulfilled in the boy, but after the first Edwin himself becomes interested in the work. We see him in the medical school, in the dissecting room. When he discovers late in his medical school course that his father is planning to marry again, Edwin is forced to leave home by an interior urge too strong to be overborne. It is their definite point of cleavage.”—Boston Transcript
“Readable, yes, eminently readable—readable to a fault. If only Mr Young could forget the impatient public and let himself be carried away into places where he thinks they do not care to follow!” K. M.
+ − Ath p1067 O 24 ’19 1100w
“Mr Young has given us a genuine achievement, one with real revelation for every reader who likes to experience contact with the deeper currents of individual life. Edwin Ingleby should, if this book has the fate it deserves, become one of the characters with whom acquaintance is considered a prerequisite of good taste in fiction.” D. L. M.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Jl 3 ’20 1250w Dial 69:546 N ’20 50w
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton