[In the following review, Carew praises Collier's wit and satire in His Monkey Wife, but notes that the novel will be intensely disliked by some readers.]

The title of Mr. John Collier's first novel, His Monkey Wife or Married to a Chimp, suggests a somewhat unpleasing variation on a zoological theme made popular by Mr. David Garnett in his “Lady into Fox.” Actually, however, the relationship between the two books is slight to the point of disappearance, for the fact that Emily happened to be a chimpanzee was the least important thing about that noble and intellectual character. Emily was, of course, a chimp (Mr. Collier insists throughout on the abbreviation) in a million, but it was not so much her ability to read as her steadfastness in love and her unlimited capacity for self-sacrifice that marked her off from the rest of her tribe. Emily loved Mr. Fatigay, a simple-hearted Englishman who spent his days teaching native children in the wilds of Boboma, but she concealed that fact from him just as she concealed her reading. Mr. Fatigay was, as it happened, engaged to a woman in England called Amy, whose letters to Mr. Fatigay caused Emily, who, with the pardonable curiosity of her sex, had read them, grave concern. They seemed to her the expression of a nature at once shallow and hard and, when she and Mr. Fatigay eventually land in England, her worst fears are realized. Amy talked in the clichés of Bloomsbury—revolting to Emily's sensitive intelligence—and her heart was as empty of love for Mr. Fatigay as her head was of any idea that was not smartly second-rate. Poor Emily, who is made Amy's servant, suffered agonies of torment, not for herself but for Mr. Fatigay, who would assuredly be committing himself to a life of misery should the monstrous marriage ever take place; and, eventually, by a trick, she takes Amy's place at the altar and is married. Her troubles are by no means over, however; for Mr. Fatigay is not unnaturally furious, and Emily is ordered to return to Africa and solitude, but such devotion as hers cannot but fail to earn its reward. Emily, who goes on the stage and becomes immensely rich, is allowed by fate first to become the ministering angel to a Mr. Fatigay reduced to starvation and poverty, and, finally, back in Africa, to be his own true love as well as his legal wife.

This is by no means a book for everybody, and those who do not like it inordinately may dislike it immensely. Mr. Collier is obviously entirely indifferent to the feelings of his readers, and it is not only the squemish who will object to certain passages; but, to set against them, there is the brilliance of Mr. Collier's wit, the point and subtlety of his satire and the rich, close-woven texture of his prose. Besides, those who do not like fantasy and object to chimp heroines can read it as a bitter and effective anti-feminist tract.