Miss Ferber's talent, this reviewer is irrevocably convinced, does not lie in the way of the novel…. She writes a novel as a modern athletic girl might wear a crinoline and a bustle. She manages the trick, but she is self-conscious and filled with secret amusement over the masquerade. Why so many words? Why such a portentous enclosure for a mere story? So I imagine Miss Ferber secretly regarding the novel form. Her forte, I humbly submit, is the short story. She has the gift, and it is my belief she has the predilection, for that form of literary art. But editors and publishers demand novels spun out to serial length and Miss Ferber, who can do it, supplies the demand. That does not vitiate the argument that her short stories are remarkably good stories, while her novels are only remarkably good short stories spun out to novel length and thereby largely spoiled.

Show Boat as an example. I am prepared to confess that I am inconsistent because I read the book with excitement, not over the story, which is negligible, but over the description of life on the Mississippi in a floating theatre. (pp. 101-02)

If it be demanded outright what is the real trouble with Show Boat as a novel it is just this, that it is written in short story tempo…. Even though she writes a novel, it goes along at a speed which leaves the author out of breath and the reviewer out of patience. (p. 102)