SOURCE: "Impressions of a Best-Seller," in The New Statesman and Nation, Vol. XVII, No. 435, June 24, 1939, pp. 998, 1000.

Quennell was an American essayist, novelist, and critic. In the following review of A Peculiar Treasure, he praises Ferber as a keen observer and an honest and enthusiastic writer, rather than as a particularly accomplished novelist or insightful autobiographer.

From several points of view A Peculiar Treasure is an engaging book. It gives us a vivid sketch of an active and successful woman: it traces the outline of a busy and exciting career: it helps to explain the methods and psychology of a modern best-seller. It is readable, diffuse, slipshod, enthusiastic, entertaining, naive. Miss Ferber is not fatuously self-complacent. On the other hand, she is neither unduly self-critical nor exaggeratedly introspective and, looking back across her life, she can afford to feel satisfied. She is modestly pleased with her present position and...