KIRKUS REVIEW
The ""creative urge"" takes strange forms and this is one of the strangest, in an offbeat book for Margery Sharp. Martha- her artist-in-the -making- is an unbelievable character and for this reader never came to life. Picture, if you can, a girl growing to maturity in the home of an aunt and uncle, who had given her a home for twelve years without ever establishing any channel of communication. For all Martha cared about was food- a Saturday bath -- and her work at the art school. Even the insistence of a dealer and critic interested in her drawing that she go (at his expense) to Paris sparked nothing more than acquiescence, if it would be good for her art. And so, apparently, it was. But she didn't reckon with any interference of natural forces- just accepted them, until she became pregnant (not wholly an Act of God). And even then her one goal was to see that the child found a proper home -- that nobody knew what had happened -- and that she could return to work and the new battle with color. Nobody could like Martha. Even reading about her proved a singularly apathetic performance. Margery Sharp usually provides odd turns of humor, an appealing bit of whimsy -- but Martha would defeat any efforts to project her onto the human canvas.