The carpentry shows too clearly in ["Marianne"]. The overextended revenge theme, the concluding twist almost right out of O. Henry, the last few pages in which all debts are paid out, all ends patly tied up—these things jut out, there is scarcely anything subtly organic about them: the narrative necessity too obviously springs from the author and not from the characters or situation.

But if the scaffolding protrudes, nevertheless, Davies has draped upon it some of the most compellingly written dramatic and emotionally evocative experiences to come along in some time. Often his style is pure biting and brooding poetry. At other times it is starkly naturalistic. The birth-scene, Marianne dying, and particularly the long series of small but battering domestic quarrels with which Barbara flails the bewildered Geoffrey to disintegration—these are the work of a writer to be respected.

It is because Mr. Davies has...