ABOUT BOOK

Now this "Susan" is a somewhat strange person for a heroine. She springs full-grown from the head of her Birch Street Zeus into the house and life of her wealthy educator, and yet, despite her young matureness, she is much of an experimentalist and a gypsy, forever roving and discursive. This shows both in her mental and physical moods. She embodies much of the spirit of youthful America and if she were flippant one might care to prophesy a George Sand's life for her when she reaches the thirties. But this is an idle conjecture. What we do know is that "Susan" is presented to us with much appeal--the appeal of her understanding, catholic heart and of her conceiver's style, which is terse and informal without being journalistic and undignified, and eminently full of tangy and subtle humor. She is the work of an author who is a psychologist--one who seems to see the little things and to estimate the big things. The frankly confessed fault of the book is that it has no narrative order; its virtue is that it does not need any... other than what Mr Dodd's professional technique compels him not to mention.