AustLit

For the scene of her story, "Eve In the Desert," which will begin publication in our columns on Saturday next, Ada A. Holman has taken a tiny mining centre in Western Australia. The narrative is drenched in local colour. As he proceeds through it, the reader realises acutely the hardships and deprivations that the inhabitants of such places have to endure—the husbanding of water supplies, the mail service which ploughs out through the sand when it can, the limited variety of the food, the sudden sandstorms which sweep down and blot out the cheerful light of the sun. The novel is no Dostoievsky-like assemblage of gloom, however. Apart from its outward settings, it is just as true to life in its portrayal of real Australian character. The people of the story carry on in the most cheerful and good-natured spirit whatever happens to them. They count their small blessings, and make the most of them. Thus, the general tone of the book is comedy. The title is given it by a girl who arrives at Kalgi from the city, and, as the only eligible and attractive feminine influence in the place, sets all the local young men by the ears. It is an easily and pleasantly drawn study, which has a ring of naturalness about it far removed from the artificial young person one sees so often in the more conventional films. The ending is unexpected, but fits in quite logically with what has gone before.

- The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 January 1934, p. 8