“Dame Polly required but two things from the novelist’s art, a rattling good yarn or a jolly good laugh. She declined to read books by girls of fifteen, proletarians or aliens, subtle evocations of childhood were thrown at cats in her garden, exquisitely sensitive portrayals of lunacy served as fuel for the boiler and a whole literature of protest by crazy mixed-up kids of forty-two lay cemented beneath the Chinese pagoda on the bank of her stream.”
Honor Tracy, A Number of Things