A quietly perceptive friend once told me of his conviction that people who "mean well" are the most dangerous of human beings, but I never fully realized the awful implications of this twisted truism until I witnessed Mrs. Taylor's genteel flaying of Flora Quartermaine [the subject of The Soul of Kindness] model wife, daughter, and friend, as ingenuously destructive as a rabid lamb, Flora's worries were always other people's worries; her pink, smiling face creased unbelievingly at intimations that people could possibly resent her kind solicitude; she arranged the lives of her family and friends as she would lilies in a vase—even if she had to snap a stem here, force a recalcitrant bud there….
As admirable example of strategic characterization and fictional grace, this novel reaffirms Mrs. Taylor's dedication to economy of means. When she describes a walk by the Thames, by God, it works in the book. When a character lights a cigarette, the gesture functions! Even the flowers are observed and described not decoratively but selectively and meaningfully; as with Colette, they are not "just background," but tremulous with life.
James R. Frakes, "A Unique Garden Variety," in Book Week—The Sunday Herald Tribune (© 1964, The Washington Post), July 12, 1964, p. 18.
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