[Richard Hughes] is anything but a flashy writer, and I must confess that I am mildly put off by his style. This, however, is only a matter of taste, and whatever polish his prose may lack is vastly compensated for by the certainty of his vision. (pp. 142-43)

Readers of The Fox in the Attic, the first novel in Hughes's projected trilogy, will encounter many of the characters they met there in The Wooden Shepherdess. The early sequences of this novel occur in the United States in the 1920s…. Hughes develops, subtly and in a low key, a reversal of the old clash of cultures theme that was so dear to the heart of Henry James. In a way Hughes's Americans are not convincing. The obvious surface details seem wrong from time to time, though the speech patterns are right and Hughes knows a great deal about the...