A book with wider appeal than The City Lies Foursquare, straight realism in a quiet, intelligent family portrait, which reads well. A substantial novel, in a story of a family between the wars, the father easy-going, unambitious, content with a small job at the ironworks, the wife, on whom the family depends, and four children, as they grow up, still held together by family bonds, each with his or her own personal problem to meet. Convincing reading, for those who like family novels.