Only ordinary character in the book is Joseph

Time reviews Seven Poor Men of Sydney, very briefly.

The reviewer writes:

Only ordinary character in the book is Joseph, whose very ordinariness lights up the grotesque genius of his companions

The realistic but poetically envisaged background of yesterday's Paris

Time reviews The Beauties and Furies.

The reviewer writes:

Against the realistic but poetically envisaged background of yesterday's Paris, in a political climate heavy with the Stavisky scandals and the riots of Feb. 6, 1934, swarms a crowd of fantastic figures in a kind of Lutetian Lupercalia.

Lack of judgment

The Neglected Books Page website reviews House of All Nations.

The webmaster writes:

In House of All Nations, it is this very lack of judgment that in collusion with her giddy, caustic humor, allows Stead to probe so deeply.

It would almost be impossible for you to emulate

The Rdginmalaysia blog reviews House of All Nations.

The blogger writes:

For this book is also a primer for writers not in the how to sense but more like the scale Everest sense. That is one human being does something you yourself know it would almost be impossible for you to emulate.

Makes brilliant sense of gigantic currency speculations

Time reviews House of All Nations in 1938 and likes it.

The reviewer writes:

Unlike most novelists of financial high life, Author Stead gives the complex details of shady transactions, banking manipulations, stock transfers, wheat deals, makes brilliant sense of gigantic currency speculations, of how the Bertillons make millions in bear operations on Kreuger stocks.

The magazine reviews House again in 1978 and likes it less.

The new reviewer writes:

This is a long, unfathomably static but often exhilarating novel about money. There are 104 chapters, at least as many characters, and dialogue that runs on and on like ticker tape.

Its matter is cold and abstract

The Village Voice reviews House of All Nations.

The reviewer writes:

It may put off admirers of that indelible horror story of family life [The Man Who Loved Children] for its matter is cold and abstract as the other is visceral and intimate.

Miss Stead has chosen to write about the most loathsome and amoral characters

Time reviews A Little Tea, a Little Chat.

The reviewer writes:

The main trouble is that Miss Stead has chosen to write about the most loathsome and amoral characters that can be dredged up from the cocktail bars and brokerage houses of New York.

Novelist Stead implies

Time magazine reviews The People With the Dogs.

The reviewer writes:

The best of them, 33-year-old Edward, a kindly fellow of no particular occupation, startles the family by marrying an actress. This kind of thing is just what the Massines need, Novelist Stead implies.

This is like notes for a novel

The Daytona Beach Morning Journal reviews The People With The Dogs.

The reviewer writes:

This is like notes for a novel; this hasn't jelled

Perhaps Christina Stead's latest book should not be reviewed

Time magazine reviews Dark Places of the Heart, the title given to Cotters' England by its U.S. publishers.

The reviewer writes:

Perhaps Christina Stead's latest book should not be reviewed, but exorcised.

Creating moments like these requires pages and pages of preparation

The Happy Antipodean blog thinks about Cotters' England.

The blogger writes:

Creating moments like these requires pages and pages of preparation. Stead, by this time an experienced novelist, knew exactly the effects she wanted and she does it beautifully.

It presents a multilayered picture of life

The Verity's Virago Venture blog reviews Cotters' England.

The blogger writes:

The mix of characters reveals a mixture of hope and aspiration along with the opposite; it presents a multilayered picture of life but not one that really held my attention.

It is this pattern of self-inflicted frustration that gives The Little Hotel its coherence

Time magazine reviews The Little Hotel.

The reviewer writes:

It is this pattern of self-inflicted frustration that gives The Little Hotel its coherence and links to earlier Stead novels like The House of All Nations (1938) ... and The Man Who Loved Children (1940), a chronicle of domestic agony that Clifton Fadiman once described as "Little Women rewritten by a demon."

Women are cast in a very unflattering light

The ANZ LitLovers blog reviews The Little Hotel.

The blogger writes:

Women are cast in a very unflattering light: dependant, inane, trivial and bitchy. Mrs Bonnard wants a friend, but there are none to be had.

Stead is not a novelist of incident but of character

The Victorian Advocate reviews The Little Hotel.

The reviewer writes:

There is little action in the novel, and what there is is minor. Miss Stead is not a novelist of incident but of character.

She manages to make a Marxist perspective seem like an asset to realism

The Village Voice reviews The Little Hotel.

The reviewer writes:

In addition, she manages to make a Marxist perspective seem like an asset to realism rather than an embarrassing inconsistency.

Reprehensible characters, sick, neurotic, or insane, Stead had a special gift for

A poster at the World Literature Forum reviews The Little Hotel.

The poster writes:

In a letter Stead once complained that she couldn't write "positive" characters. It was not her talent. Aside from the hotel owner no one here comes off as very pleasant, and even she is less a saint than a practical businesswomen. Reprehensible characters, sick, neurotic, or insane, Stead had a special gift for. The joy of The Little Hotel lies in her little portraits.

Eleanor's life is divided

The North American Review reviews Miss Herbert (the Suburban Wife).

The reviewer writes:

Like the title of the novel, Eleanor's life is divided. She thinks of herself always enclosed in parentheses.

There is a certain mischievousness about the woman

The Verity's Virago Venture blog reviews Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife).

The blogger writes:

I have the later green edition and think that there is a certain mischievousness about the woman on the front of that version which encapsulates Eleanor entirely.

In Miss Herbert, however, Stead reveals a touch of the sadist

Time magazine reviews Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife).

The reviewer writes:

Sympathy is not a necessary virtue in an excellent writer. In Miss Herbert, however, Stead reveals a touch of the sadist.