SOURCE: "Exiles," in The New Republic, Vol. LXXVII, No. 993, December 13, 1933, pp. 136-37.

In the following review which compares Gentlemen, I Address You Privately with Jack Conroy's The Disinherited, Cantwell concludes that Boyle's writing suffers from isolation and unrealistic characters.

Kay Boyle has now published three novels and two volumes of short stories and, with this much evidence on hand, the character and development of her work is becoming clear. She is one of the most eloquent and one of the most prolific writers among the expatriates; her work is always finished in the sense that her phrases are nicely cadenced and her imagery often striking and apt; her characters are almost always highly sensitized individuals who are marooned or in flight in some foreign country, banding together in small groups in which the antagonisms often seem intense beyond their recognizable causes. These small groups of exiles from their...