Never Ask The End

Paterson’s 1933 fictional account of Marta Brown and Pauline Gardiner—two American women in Paris.

Roberts Tapley, Bookman, January 1933:

Abundantly garnished with good things of Mrs. Paterson’s own and good things she has gleaned here and there, Never Ask the End looms larger in retrospect than a mere aggregate of good things; it creates the impression of life and intrinsic force, or original power, like something transfused and welded and informed by creative heat at the core.

James Branch Cabell, Saturday Review, 7 January 1933:

Mrs. Paterson has made, in Never Ask the End, a book which any tolerably civilized American must regard, throughout, with a sort of charmed squirming. Of those of us Americans, reasonably cultured, who have today reached responsible middle life, here is an honest portrait, all the honest, will admit perforce. Thus, and not otherwise, have we lived, from each moment to the next moment, during the most notable generation, it may be, and during the most disastrous generation, it is certain, in the world’s history.