[The title of A Little Tea, A Little Chat (1948)] is the euphemistic phrase employed by the central figure, Robert Grant, when tempting women to partake of bed without breakfast, which he does with effortless regularity throughout the novel. Grant is a shallow, soulless man, an amoral profiteer in wartime New York who holds court to a succession of dreary people while idly but constantly expounding his hypocritical ideals….

The problem for the reader is sustaining interest in Stead's poisonous creation. Much as I appreciate the title's irony, the novel contains a great deal too much chat. Page after page consists almost entirely of Grant's monologues, diatribes, phoney wisdom, and it becomes both frustrating and exhausting to wade through it all. As an exercise in maintaining one man's relentless voice, as it travels monotonously down one's inner ear, it succeeds. As a novel, it is progressively less absorbing. By...