In general, reviewers praise Sons and Lovers, though when doing so, they just as often point out its shortcomings. A writer for the The Saturday Review, for example, gives the novel this backhanded compliment: "The sum of its defects is astonishingly large, but we only note it when they are weighed against the sum of its own qualities." A reviewer for the New York Times Book Review has reservations with the novel's style, writing in an essay titled "Mother Love," "It is terse—so terse that at times it produces an effect as of short, sharp hammer strokes." However, the same writer calls the book one of "rare excellence." Writing almost a decade later in 1924, in her essay "Artist Turned Prophet" for The Dial, Alyse Gregory asserts that Lawrence is at his very best in Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, and Twilight in Italy. In...