Van Vorst, Marie. Amanda of the mill: a novel. †$1.50. Dodd.
Reviewed by Mary Moss.
Atlan. 97: 51. Ja. ’06. 30w.
Van Vorst, Marie. Miss Desmond: an impression. †$1.50. Macmillan.
It was Balzac who created the heroine of thirty, and Marie Van Vorst has perpetuated the creation in her present fiction study. Miss Desmond is of the Puritan type, and after burying thirty-two years in her shut-away New England garden, finds herself unexpectedly expanding under the influence of the new life at a Swiss resort while chaperoning the daughter of her handsome and much talked-of sister. The threads of the story begin to tangle when the increasingly radiant Miss Desmond becomes her sister’s rival, and yields to the enchantment in spite of the fact that Robert Bedford has not an unblemished reputation.
+ – Acad. 70: 40. Ja. 13, ’06. 340w.
“Neither the plot nor the characters are strikingly original.”
+ – Ath. 1906, 1: 42. Ja. 13. 310w
“The development of the theme is dramatic, though at times a little unsure; and the characterization is uncommonly delicate and significant.”