Talk:The Breaking Point (Rinehart novel)

Reviews

 * "The Editor Recommends" in The Bookman, September 1922: WITHOUT any question "", is the most thoroughly absorbing novel for sheer story value that I have read in months. Written with a sure knowledge of the technique of plot building, an unfailing use of the dramatic, a deft sense of characterization, and a clever interweaving of sentiment, it again assures us that Mrs. Rinehart has an increasingly intuitive vision. It is a mystery story, yes. It is a love story, yes. It will make an excellent moving picture, yes. But it is more than that, it is a vivid portrayal of the fact that each one of us has an inner self, another self, around which we learn to build up a screen—a screen through which we fear to have our neighbors look, a screen through which we are finally unable to look ourselves. Dick Livingston will be, to many of us, a symbol of ourselves. Where his past is definitely forgotten, where he is actually possessed of a dual personality, we are simply inhibited, hypocritical, or blind. It is, of course, love that brings The Breaking Point, that makes Livingston face the past and weld it with the present to create a firm will for the future. Surely there is no more dramatic moment in recent fiction than the one where the upright young doctor begins to remember his ugly past. Reviewers have said that Mrs. Rinehart's continued success depends on her cleverness in developing plot and her masterly handling of a mere story; but no popularity can rest on those characteristics alone! She understands her middle class. She enjoys writing of them, and she reports the American home as few of our writers can. If she chooses to interpret life by a mystery story, that is her own affair. I read every word of The Breaking Point and it excited and moved me to a point where the first thing I wanted to do was to tell someone else to read it, and the second was, to have a chance to talk over certain of her ideas with its author. Here is a novel that may be read by thousands with perfect confidence that no problem is presented; but for me it was one of the most exciting problem novels I have ever read. This is a supremely clever handling of material, isn't it?


 * The New Republic, 23 Aug 1922: At last! A pie like mother used to make. The kind you have always bought. An old-fashioned novel for old-fashioned readers. The hero, with the advantage of a dissociated personality, becomes the basis of a plot such as Wilkie Collins would have framed. The other characters have no obligation except to provide that novel-readers' satisfaction so well understood by Miss Braddon and E. P. Roe. From thousands of hearts and homes the cry will go up this summer: Thank God for Mary Roberts Rinehart!


 * The Bookman, July 1923: A mystery romance of something akin to dual personality. Filled with thrills and psychological understanding.