Right. So, it's now eight years. I've many, many notebooks, but what I see when I examine the notebooks now are phases of development toward the work I'm doing at present. I see it in embryonic stages early on, and I begin to see what I thought were simply notes, because they didn't resemble my earlier work, were, actually in early form, the work that I have now begun to do … the new work, in other words. I didn't recognize it at first. I thought it was failed old work.

Miss Caroline Gordon, whose novels and short stories have always been remarkable for their subtle poetic essence and vigilant craftsmanship, has never to this reviewer's knowledge attained the neon glories of best-sellerdom. It is barely possible that with the publication of her eighth novel, The Malefactors, she may be called upon to endure the wider success, for it...