“With grace and clearness and with a skill that holds the reader’s attention unfailingly, the tale is told. Its accomplishment is fine and delicate, though its convincingness is not complete.”
+ − Boston Transcript p7 N 10 ’20 480w (Reprinted from London Observer)
“Here we have again in careful acrimony mingled with a warm consciousness of physical beauty which is so characteristic of Mr Galsworthy.” E. W. N.
+ Freeman 2:454 Ja 19 ’21 200w
“Mr Galsworthy never lets his utmost penetration make him ruthless. He knows that ruthlessness is simply a failure to perceive the dark and pathetic humanity that lies just beyond the immediate horizon of one’s vision.” L. L.
+ Nation 112:88 Ja 19 ’21 750w
“The book is in many ways one of the biggest Mr Galsworthy has ever written; perhaps the very biggest. A better balanced, more logical and saner novel than ‘The saint’s progress,’ one accepts its reasonings and analyses, which satisfy at once one’s brain and one’s instinct. It is notable among the notable, a novel to read—and to read again.”
+ N Y Times p24 O 24 ’20 1500w
“It is a serious drawback that the first dozen pages or so of this book are a regular barbedwire obstruction because of their intricate tangle of genealogy and relationships. The reader who perseveres, however, will be rewarded by as fine and penetrating a study of temperament and heredity as is often written—not ‘highbrow’ or philosophical, but dramatic, tense and vivid.” R. D. Townsend
+ − Outlook 126:653 D 8 ’20 430w