SOURCE: "Kay Boyle's Primer for Combat," in New York Times Book Review, November 8, 1942, p. 6.

In the following review, Hauser praises Primer for Combat as a powerful portrayal of France in 1940 under Nazi rule.

Last year, after nearly two decades in Europe, Kay Boyle returned to America. Primer for Combat, her first book since her return, has its setting in France in 1940 during the months that followed Compiègne. It is a novel which in the form of a diary presents an incisive portrait of France after her defeat.

Miss Boyle is no journalist. She does not content herself with a mere enumeration of facts but searches for the human purport behind them, exploring a people's psychological reactions under the immense pressure of a political force majeure.

The form of the book is well chosen. No doubt Miss Boyle must have felt that the Battle of France is too...