[Listen to the Wind] is basically a sentimental book; a love story in which everything comes all right in the end; it is also a very old-fashioned story, a long one, told with complete realism, describing a place and all its people faithfully until one knows it as well as anywhere: like a real place. The reader will also learn to sympathise both with the despised 'Islanders' and with Tam, who wants to get away from being one of them. Mrs. Brinsmead certainly justifies both her story and her way of telling it in this deeply satisfying, wise and tender book.