What first interests me in [The Return of the Soldier] is its length, or rather its brevity: all is done within one hundred and eighty-five pages…. Miss West's "novella" is an episode, a situation involving but a few days—or would be, were it not for a chronological backthrow which provides perspective, complications, and the road to a highly effective climax. We think, at the start, that we have to deal with Rebecca West as still the brisk and brusque young radical of &#x...