Reviewed by Christine McAllister
Pub W 97:604 F 21 ’20 300w
DELL, ETHEL MAY. Top of the world. *$2 (1½c) Putnam
20–13065
Sylvia Ingleton is a very miserable girl when her father brings home a stepmother, who proves so domineering and hard that Sylvia realizes her happiness is ruined unless she gets away. So she goes out to her fiancé in South Africa, a fiancé whom she has known only by correspondence for the last five years. Upon her arrival there, Guy fails her, but his cousin Burke steps into his place, and when Sylvia realizes she cannot count on Guy, she consents to marry Burke. The remainder of the story is taken up with the struggle between her old dying love for Guy, and the new love which springs up in her heart for Burke, which at first she fights against and denies. In the end it conquers her, however, but not before she and Guy and Burke have gone through many bitter waters.
“The amazing thing about the Dell fiction is that it is so good of its kind. There is almost no sensual appeal in it, and very little of anything that is revolting. As full of sob stuff as Florence Barclay’s immortal works, it has still a virile fibre. The South African descriptions are excellent. Much of the subsidiary character work is distinctly good.”
+ Boston Transcript p7 N 24 ’20 390w
“That’s the kind of a story it is—lingering madness long drawn out—562 pages of mawkishness.”
− N Y Times p28 Ja 2 ’21 470w