["Return to Night"] has everything Hollywood could possibly want—an English town in the Cotswold, a tense scene in the operating room, upper middle class country house interiors, Romeo and Juliet love scenes by the dozen, tea every afternoon, rain or shine, and masses of old wartime tweed. There are also a few things which Hollywood will have to rearrange.

Possibly Mary Renault had something other than the M-G-M award in mind when she sat down to write "Return to Night." Her purpose may have been to explore the freedom of woman in the modern world. Bravely she has taken on those aspects of personality which she considers to be typically male—irritability, impatience and, so she thinks, objectivity. Actually the objectivity of which she is so proud is a negation of feminine tenderness, a cultivated remoteness fed by hyper-criticism of others….

Miss Renault writes with competence and...