– Critic. 48: 286. Mr. ’06. 130w.
Hichens, Robert Smythe. [Call of the blood]; il. by Orson Lowell. †$1.50. Harper.
An Englishman ten years younger than his “ugly though brilliantly clever and intellectual” bride finds, under the sunny skies of Sicily whence they go for their honeymoon, that he cannot resist the cry of youth and beauty. The strain of Sicilian blood in his veins is responsible for his aptitude in dancing the tarantella and for his yielding to the quick call of love—dishonourable tho it be, and tragic tho it prove.
“It is a full-blooded stirring story—a work which, if Mr. Hichens had not written ‘The garden of Allah,’ we might hail as the greatest novel of passion in the century.”
+ + Acad. 71: 266. S. 15, ’06. 150w.
“Mr. Hichens at any rate is open to the accusation of taking a long time to tell a simple story.”
+ – Ath. 1906, 2: 362. S. 29, 370w.
“Mr. Hichens envelops himself in rather artificial motives and seems quite oblivious of the influences that must really move his characters to act with consummate naturalness to an inevitable end.” Duffield Osborne
+ – Bookm. 24: 377. D. ’06. 780w.