And horrifying, Miss Benson might have added [to her title People are Fascinating]. A dreadfully veracious picture of humanity emerges from one of the wittiest collections of stories I have read for some years. The author possesses what so many more pompous talents lack, an attitude…. Although Miss Benson retains in her style and method a beautiful detachment, her choice of subject and detail is controlled by a passion of distaste. The stories qualify each other. This is how human beings appear to her; it is her individual expression of the life, nasty, brutish and short. Very occasionally the horror deepens.

Graham Greene, "Books of the Day: 'People Are Fascinating'" (copyright © 1937 by Graham Greene; reprinted by permission of Laurence Pollinger Limited), in The Spectator, Vol. 158, No. 5668, February 12, 1937, p. 280.