"With this novel Margery Sharp surpasses her own record for warmhearted, entertaining stories. She has used her light touch, her gentle wisdom about human nature, not in a comedy but in a sympathetic chronicle of a life spanning three generations. Here is a book about people who will take their places among the living in literature.

"Joining the select numbers of Margery Sharp heroines is Adelaide, who went to live in Britannia Mews in defiance and utter disregard of her family. Like Julia in THE NUTMEG TREE, and like Cluny Brown, Adelaide had several brains in her head, and a firm, not to say imperious, hand on her own destiny. She also had, as a girl growing up in would-be fashionable Victorian society, absolutely no preparation for what could happen when she broke away from the family shelter, but this was only the introduction to what actually did happen. Her own forthright reactions were responsible for the rest of the amazing story."