“Ostensibly, it is a diary in which a married woman, of middle age, moving in a cultivated circle of American society, sets down the wild, original, heretical ideas which she has elaborated during her travels in Europe. Actually, it is a story of the spiritual adventures of a commonplace mind of a chameleon nature vagrant among unrealised worlds of thought.”
– Acad. 71: 394. O. 20, ’06. 1020w.
“However much we may differ from her expressions of opinion, their frankness and sincerity combined with the author’s genuine culture and love for literature and art in all forms make them worth reading.”
+ Critic. 49: 90. Jl. ’06. 140w. + N. Y. Times. 11: 386. Je. 16, ’06. 180w.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Banks.
+ N. Y. Times. 11: 420. Je. 30, ’06. 1630w.
“The excellent style, quaint humor, and shrewd philosophy certainly deserve to have their author known.”
+ R. of Rs. 34: 384. S. ’06. 50w.
Sedgwick, Anne Douglas. [Shadow of life.] †$1.50. Century.
If indeed it is in the shadow of things that this story pursues its way, it is such a shadow as Ruskin attributes to disappointment, the Titian twilight in which one sees the “real color of things with deeper truth than in the most dazzling sunshine.” Gavin and Eppie are two lonely children, hungering for happiness, who during a brief summer in a Scottish country home exchange their weird confidences. During sixteen years, Gavin is absent, then returns to find Eppie a splendid young woman of such strength, sweetness and daring that she seemed a “Flying victory” done by Velasquez. The romance that is quickened to the point of vows is blighted by temperamental differences. Gavin forces Eppie who loved life and battle to see that he would suffocate her, that he was the negation of everything that she believed in. The tragedy is one of helplessness.