SOURCE: Price, Reynolds. “New Novels.” Punch 240 (5 April 1961): 553-54.

In the following excerpt, Price asserts that The Light in the Piazza might be more effective as a short story instead of a novella.

This has been a disappointing week; by that I mean that I have never become excited while reading, never hurried back to a novel, never wanted to push any of the batch under my friends' eyes. I suppose there is an inevitable gap between the reviewer who says “I have read all this before,” and the reader who says “You may have but I haven't. Your job is to read novels; mine isn't.” Of course, the very good or very bad book is easy enough to deal with by reader or reviewer. It is the in-between one that is the difficulty. To say “I didn't think much of it because it seemed hackneyed; but if you...