January 1961
This novel describes the gradual disintegration of a marriage - between an actor-manager of a small theatre in London and his wife who writes novels, whose second marriage this is, and who has an almost grown-up son by her first. The theatrical background is well and restrainedly done, and the whole story an encouraging first publication by an author who was sixteen at the time of writing it.
I mention her age because it would be unfair not to: taken as a novel ranged beside all other novels, it is unremarkable; but taking future possibilities into account, Miss Hill gives many signs of talent which are perceptible if not entirely effective in this first work. She has discovered a good deal about her characters’ behaviour; and although she has not yet learned not to plod anxiously from A to B in her story, her experiments in building certain scenes show a visual gift which is indispensable to the theatre and extremely useful to the novelist. Few people who have not tried it know how mysteriously difficult it is to sustain interest in a full-length work of fiction (even spiders must get tired during a really large web), and the mere fact that Miss Hill has achieved this so early is the most hopeful indication of her work to come.