SOURCE: Peterson, Virgilia. Review of The Light in the Piazza, by Elizabeth Spencer. New York Herald Tribune Books (27 November 1960): 30.

In the following review, Peterson asserts that The Light in the Piazza fails to engage the reader.

Elizabeth Spencer is a writer of distinction and delicacy. Cradled in that South which is providing us with so much of the best in contemporary American literature, she has produced three novels and a number of short stories fine enough to place her well beyond the honorable but inconclusive category of women novelists as such. With her last book—The Voice at the Back Door—she emerged as a notable talent. It is therefore with high expectation that one opens this latest of her tales, the prizewinning novella with the felicitous title of The Light in the Piazza. But before the close one becomes aware that this story, so held down by...