The Lying Days Lying Days" in 1953 were generally positive. "New York Times" critic James Stern compared the novel favourably to the works of Alan Paton, especially "Cry, the Beloved Country", describing "The Lying Days" as the better of the two novels. Stern described the novel as less "novel" and more "biography", following the style and form of biographical writing. In a review in the "Fitchburg Sentinel", W. G. Rogers wrote that in "The Lying Days" Gordimer shows that South Africa "is a land not of a single problem, race, but of many problems which that one central issue seems to magnify and
The Well-Beloved Pierston's search for the ideal woman, through three generations of a Portland family. A cottage housing what is now part of Portland Museum, on the Isle of Portland, founded by Marie Stopes, a friend of Hardy and his wife, was an inspiration for the book. The cottage acted as the home of Avice, the novel's heroine. The Well-Beloved The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament is a novel by Thomas Hardy, serialized in 1892, and published as a book in 1897. The main setting of the novel, the Isle of Slingers, is based on the Isle of Portland in Dorset,