"Round the Corner" is perhaps Mr. Cannan's best book but "Young
Earnest" and "Old Mole" are also curious and interesting volumes.
Mr. Cannan is as typical a modern writer as could be found anywhere.
And yet modernity is not his only charm. He has genuine psychological
insight and though this insight comes in flashes and is not continuous
it often gives an original twist to his characters which helps to make
them strangely convincing and appealing. "Round the Corner" is a
genuine masterpiece. It is the history of the most charming and
touching clergyman described in all English fiction since the Vicar of
Wakefield; and the massive, solid manner in which the story is
constructed, the vigor and reality of the interplay of the various
members of Francis' family, the admirable portrait of the mother, the
grand and solemn close of the book, make it one of the most powerful
works of fiction England has produced during the last decade.
Now and again--and what praise could go further?--there are little
touches of clear-cut realism, of that kind which has a mystical
background, which actually suggest some of the lighter and more
idyllic work of Goethe himself. The book has genuine wisdom in it, of
a sort superior to any philosophical system, and one feels at the
close the tonic and soothing effect of a powerful moral influence,
sweetening and refining one's general reaction towards life.