SOURCE: "Ungenteel Irony," in The Nation, Vol. 139, No. 3615, October 17, 1934, p. 458.

In the following assessment of Farrell's first collection, Kronenberger praises the harsh realism of Farrell's characterization.

Although no single story in [Calico Shoes] is particularly impressive, the book as a whole carries weight. Mr. Farrell writes about people he knows, and whose background he knows, inside out; and to this initial merit of being saturated with his material he adds a second, of handling it with an honest sobriety that makes it stick in your memory and register on your mind. He is in no sense a finished or ingratiating story-teller; except for his sure ear for dialogue he commands none of the props which help narrative forward. But it is perhaps just as well that he doesn't, since he throws his undivided strength into something more important: ferreting out the truth. His delineation of Chicago's low Irish...