The Three Sisters

An excerpt from Book Review Digest, Volume 10, 1915:

May Sinclair's story is a study in abnormal psychology—or a psychological study of the effects of abnormal conditions.

The scene is laid in the north of England where James Cartaret has brought his family after certain innocent indiscretions on the part of his youngest daughter Alice have led him to abandon his parish in the south.

The three girls live immured in the vicarage, cut off from friendship and youth, spending weary evenings in the society of one another, waiting for the one event of their day—family prayers. The life affects them differently. Mary takes to good works; Gwenda roams the moors alone at night; Alice pines and fades. Yet the mind of each is engaged all the time with one figure, Steven Rowcliffe, the young doctor. Mary thinks: "He will see that I am sweet and womanly"; Gwenda: “He will wonder who that strange girl is who is unafraid"; Alice: "I will make myself ill and he will come to see me." The outcome of this situation and the ultimate reaction of each as a result of it, is the substance of the story. May Sinclair employs her uncanny power of getting inside a man's mind, too, in the case of James Cartaret, the vicar.

It is because it gives so forthright and imaginative a conspectus of feminine character that its occasional indirections are bewildering.