Phillpotts, Eden. Whirlwind. †$1.50. McClure.
7–4812.
Mr. Phillpotts’ “standard is a high one. His method is conceived on a large scale. It is no other than to bring all the aspects of nature—the changing sky, with its range of colours, the wind that blows across his Devon moors, the trees, the flowers, the animals, all the denizens of earth—into league with him in telling one great story of passion or love or disaster.” (Acad.) “In his theme Mr. Phillpotts has enlarged the ‘eternal triangle’ of one woman and two men into a case of one woman loved by three men and herself honestly loving two of the men and married to one of them. This must be admitted to be a new complication, warranted to tax even the ingenuities of as keen a student of human nature as Mr. Phillpotts, and requiring no little delicacy of perception and feeling for its acceptable solution.” (N. Y. Times.)
“There is a lack of inevitability about the final tragedy, and that lack lends to the tragedy an element of sordidness which is belittling.”
| + − | Acad. 72: 95. Ja. 26, ’07. 460w. |
“It will be seen that while Mr. Phillpotts runs the risk, as often, of falling into melodrama, he keeps himself out of that pit by the artistry of his handling and the dignity of his characterization.”
| + | Ath. 1907, 1: 129. F. 2. 450w. |
“Mr. Phillpotts has never given us anything so effectively composed as the present novel. In its culminating situation the action moves serenely upon the heights of real tragedy, and leaves one with the same richly complex yet elevated sense of peace.” Harry James Smith.
| + + | Atlan. 100: 127. Jl. ’07. 1350w. |