Starting in the present day (when the novel was written), a chance remark by one of the couple's children takes Ella back to the time when the two met in Cornwall while on holiday.
Mr. Boyd, unlike many of his contemporaries, is a careful craftsman (he has something more than modern slickness), from whom in the future a novel of significance and literary value might confidently be expected.
"[2] In The Telegraph (Brisbane) the reviewer notes that Boyd is "one of the fiction writers who believe in the virtues of direct writing and concise thinking, qualities which make his books eminently readable and a good deal more thought-provoking than many a consciously clever story.
Australian expatriate Martin Boyd's slight novel of middle-class British family life, The Night of the Party [sic] (1938), was released.
Haydon's report noted 'the author's obvious dislike for some of the conventions which regulate civilised life' and Allen described it as a 'clever sketch of the artistic nature'; neither mentioned the suspiciously camp son of a main character."