For somber portrayal of love, hate, and the dark passions that lie on the outer rim of sanity, Rhys Davies of Wales has few peers. In a score of novels … he has developed a rotund, coldly exact style which seems perfectly tailored to his blend of morality play and Welsh Gothic. True, his offering may seem cheerless, macabre stuff to readers on a bland diet. So, for many of the same reasons, is Dostoevsky cheerless. Yet "The Dark Daughters" … and ["Marianne"] are distinguished by the author's rare mastery over individual scenes and characters and by the force of his indignation, which casts a dull glow over the entire proceedings. In our uneasy present, when many writers are preoccupied with the tensions of the day, Mr. Davies sticks to timeless problems of birth, death, motherhood, family relations and male vs. female.

This is not to say that his skills as a writer are always strong enough or sharp enough for the tasks set before them. Intensity of the author's emotional feeling obscures (but does not hide) the fact that he depends upon an adjectival style to convey it. At climactic moments, characters sometimes orate when the reader expects them to react. With all his Celtic passion, Mr. Davies can be fairly accused of lacking the humor and tenderness which together spell warmth. But he will not be accused of lacking dramatic power or a gift for catching complex human relations at high tide.

In outline, "Marianne" may seem contrived and mechanical….

[But one] remembers the suspenseful power of the birth scene, the vignettes of a tawdry courtship, the intimate horrors of Barbara's married life, the unrelieved cross-tensions that hold the novel together. "Marianne" may appear turgid and cold, with speechifying characters. But to most readers, it will leave a sense of identification with the very real troubles of one family, members of which are drawn directly from life.