["Mad Puppetstown"] follows a more or less familiar pattern, but it is written with so much beauty and freshness that it seems, while one is reading it, to be alone of its kind. It is primarily a novel of locale, and nothing in it is so important as the feeling of a particular place that it conveys—the atmosphere, the color and activity, the sights and sounds of an Irish home. The considerations of plot and character are secondary—though the plot, what there is of it, is quite adequate, and the characters are ably and unmistakably drawn. Puppetstown, the seat of the Chevingtons, dominates the book.

In those mellow and prosperous years before the war and before the turbulent outbreak of the Irish rebellion, Puppetstown had been the centre of life for the Chevingtons…. Above all, Puppetstown was Irish to the core—there was something that set...