Giant's Bread - Literary Significance and Reception

Literary Significance and Reception

The Times Literary Supplement reviewed the book on 29 May 1930. The reviewer, unaware of the true identity of the author, praised the "arresting prologue" and stated that the early years of Vernon Deyre were "described with charm and capture the child's point of view."

The review in The New York Times Book Review (17 August 1930) declared, "Whoever is concealed beneath the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott may well feel proud of Giant's Bread. The blurb lends mystery to Miss Westmacott's identity. She has written half a dozen successful books under her own name, it says, but they have been so different from Giant's Bread that she decided to have it 'judged on its own merits and not in the light of previous success.' Who she is does not matter, for her book is far above the average of current fiction, in fact, comes well under the classification of a 'good book.' And it is only a satisfying novel that can claim that appellation. In Giant's Bread there are traces of the careful, detailed writing of the English novelist, and there are hints of Mary Roberts Rinehart's methods of mentioning a finished episode and explaining later how it all happened." The review concluded, "Each figure is well conceived, human and true."

Gerald Gould reviewed the novel in the 4 May 1930 issue of The Observer when he wrote, "Giant's Bread is an ambitious and surprisingly sentimental story about a young man with musical genius, mixed love-affairs, a lost memory, a family tradition, and other commodities out of the bag of novelist's tricks. Miss Westmacott shows narrative talent; but would presumably be more original if she strained less after originality. I should expect her book to be very popular."