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SIXTH HEAVEN by L.P. Hartley Kirkus Star

SIXTH HEAVEN

By

Pub Date: July 10th, 1947
Publisher: Doubleday

The second (and there will be a third) chronicle of the interrelationship of sister and brother, this is perhaps less elliptic, more explicit than The West Window, which is its predecessor, but continues with charm, intelligence, felicity the story of Hilda and Eustace Cherrington. Even though now grown up, as Hilda conducts a clinic for crippled children and Eustace, with his legacy from Miss Fothergill, enjoys a rather gilded life at Oxford, Hilda is still a too dominant influence on Eustace, Eustace too held by her beauty, her energy which devours. The clinic, which is for Hilda an extension of her relationship with Eustace, fails as a substitution when for the first time she falls in love, prodded by Eustace who suffers from her love for another man which vicariously he had stimulated. When that love proves unworthy, Hilda has a complete breakdown. Eustace, summering abroad under the rich patronage of Lady Stavely, returns to care for Hilda, shocks her back to health, but leaves the question of his future freedom from Hilda to another volume... There's a sensitivity here, a skill, an accuracy of thought and feeling which will recommend this to a discriminating following.