"In Such a Night" is worked out so carefully, so skilfully, that it seems a pity the book should reach no higher level than it does. Here is an inviting theme, a clever method, a firmly-directed prose….

But Miss Deutsch has unfortunately failed to do the two things most important to her story: she hasn't made the housewarming really alive, and she hasn't made it significant…. People live for minutes, the house lives for minutes, then they settle back into an appearance of reality which is a matter of the surface only.

And what significance have these people? They survey one another, they survey themselves, but without freshness, without penetration, without uniqueness; you are willing to admit that what they do is plausible and understandable, but not that it is stimulating to the mind, or responsive to the emotions, or compensating to your sense of humor. If they...