SOURCE: "Her Name Is Legion," in The Nation, Vol. 154, June 20, 1942, p. 714.

Isherwood is an English-born man of letters who is known for his largely autobiographical accounts of pre-Nazi Berlin and for his detached, humorous observations on human nature and manners. As a young man during the 1930s, he was a member of the Marxist-oriented Oxford group of poets that included Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden. In the following review, Isherwood questions McCarthy's artistic intention in The Company She Keeps but nevertheless hails the six portraits that comprise the volume.

The publishers' somewhat pretentious synopsis and Miss McCarthy's amusing foreword unintentionally do their best to mislead us as to the character of [The Company She Keeps]. So let us begin with a synopsis of our own.

The Company She Keeps is divided into six episodes. The first, "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," describes, with the disgusted objectivity of a...