Publisher's Synopsis
Another book which the test of memory helps to weigh in the balance is "A Candidate for Truth" which Mr. J. D. Beresford gives a further installment of the lives and experiences of the people whose acquaintance we previously made in Jacob Stahl. The net impression left by this second volume simply confirms our vaguer memory of the first. Whatever importance there may be in what the author has to tell us rests, not in what his people do. so much as in what they are. Mr. Beresford belongs to the old, leisurely school of novelists He has slight gifts for construction of plot: his story seems to build itself, as it foes alone, out of the innumerable little details of daily comings and goings. His sense of character, his observation of the significant and vital little things in life are often almost miraculous in their subtle and amazing? understanding'. -- and it is these little things which the reader remembers, after the bigger aspects of the story have begun to fade. Strictly speaking. "A Candidate for Truth" is not a novel: it is only a fragment of life. like the torso of a broken statue It is a chapter out of the life history of a man who has failed to find his way, and who is groping rather blindly for some anchor, a creed, a profession, a lasting affection. At the close of the volume, he has apparently found his anchor in the person of Betty Gale, who with Mrs. Parmenter. runs the modest boarding-house to which Jacob has drifted. Because of the wife who has left Jacob and refuses to return to him. but also refuses to divorce him, legal marriage with Betty Hale is impossible. But. at the moment when we take leave of them, the two have decided that this is a matter which concerns no one but themselves. -- and the result of their experiment is promised as the theme of still another volume in the series. It is a pity that space does not permit of a detailed analysis of the character of Betty Gale. Although the author has dealt with her rather briefly, giving scant descriptions and letting us hear her speak but seldom, he has none the less made us feel the restfulness of her presence, the unobtrusive yet pervading charm of her womanliness.
--The Bookman, Volume 35