Stella Gibbons detestation of pomposity and pretence. Truss has described Gibbons as "the Jane Austen of the 20th century", a parallel which the novelist Malcolm Bradbury thought apt; Flora Poste in "Cold Comfort Farm", with her "higher common sense", is "a Jane-ite heroine transformed into a clear-eyed modern woman". Bradbury also observed that many of Gibbons's novels end in Austen-like nuptials. Truss highlights the importance that Gibbons places on detachment as a necessary adjunct to effective writing: "Like many a good doctor, she seems to have considered sympathy a peculiar and redundant emotion, and a terrible waste of time." This matter-of-fact quality
The Narrows (Petry novel) The Narrows (Petry novel) The Narrows is a 1953 novel by African-American writer Ann Petry. “The Narrows” is the name of the African-American section of the fictional town of Monmouth, Connecticut, in which most of the novel's action takes place. Though less famous than Petry's earlier novel, "The Street", "The Narrows" is her longest novel and, critic Hilary Holladay argues, her most complex: “"The Narrows" represents the full flowering of Petry’s preoccupation with human relationships.” The novel is written in the third person, narrated from the perspective of several different characters, often in flashback episodes. The epigraph in "The Narrows"