ABSTRACT
This is Mr. Huxley's best novel for a very long time. He has recaptured the gaiety, the conciseness, the passionate interest in human beings, in fact the novelist's attitude which seemed to have eluded him. Time Must Have a Stop is admirably constructed; character after character is introduced with casual informality, their repercussions on each other follow
with the intricacy of a chess opening. The scene is Florence, and all Huxley's youthful love and knowledge of Italy reappear. The book is bright and sunpierced and there is a happiness such as is seldom found in his later work in descriptions like that of the young poet's arrival at the villa in a car by night, or his morning meditation in the garden. And an unfailing sense of comedy. Except for too many flashes of the old vulgarity in style Mr. Huxley seems to have been born again.
