A broad plain, frequently accented by little hills, would certainly form an appropriate metaphor to describe the effect of Padraic Colum's new novel [The Flying Swans]….

I would not recommend this contemplative book to the kind of reader who expects a novel to give him a roller-coaster ride, on which, once pinned down by the safety bar, he is swept breathless up dizzy heights and hurtled screaming down dizzier depths, until the vehicle deposits him, retching and staggering, on firm ground once more. This is rather the kind of book that one lays aside from time to time in order to daydream over one's own youth. (p. 404)

In the long run, when this novel's characters and incidents have faded from the reader's mind, one abiding influence will remain with him—its style. Perhaps it would be more correct to call it a language rather than a style, that...