Amounting to rather more than a random collection of short pieces, "Cress Delahanty" has almost the continuity of a novel….

Most of the episodes, slight in themselves, are in the vein of wry compassionate comedy….

Jessamyn West … is a serious writer and a realist, and some of her stories are more sombre, some a good deal more powerful….

[When Cress falls in love for the first time,] the author's extraordinary skill, insight, and accuracy of touch are given full play. What might have been grotesque or embarrassing is in fact genuinely moving: Mr. Cornelius and his wife are fine people, and teach Cress a good deal about the nature of love, about human devotion.

It is perhaps inevitable that a book written piecemeal, over a long period, should be uneven. Here and there comedy broadens into farce, or a point seems labored, or a faint implausibility steals in...