SOURCE: "Du Maurier Collection: Polished but Shallow," in Chicago Tribune, Part 7, November 15, 1959, p. 7.

Sullivan is an American novelist and critic. In the following negative review of The Breaking Point, he perceives du Maurier's approach to human interactions as shallow and calculated.

The prose written by Daphne du Maurier is both grammatical and efficient. It is a prose well practiced in story telling, and over the years it has given pleasure to a multitude of readers. But perhaps—at least as exhibited in The Breaking Point—it is a deceptive prose, which conceals in a pleasant, experienced way the essential shallowness of its approach to human entanglements.

The stories which make up this collection may all be accurately summed up by the book's collective title. Each piece deals with a person brought, one way or another, to something like a breaking point; and then this person breaks, one way...