As reviewed in the "Chicago Schools Journal" - June 1926:
Goodbye, Stranger. By Stella Benson.
|"The small monotonous mongrel suburb in the concession area of China, the setting of Miss Benson's satiric novel, is inhabited by puppet-like caricatures — Daley, an effusive_"nice" little American wife, her lumbering ineffectual English husband impelled with a vague but poignant dissatisfaction, cynical old mother, a troupe of three tawdry English women well on into uncertain years, a severely and shrilly proper missionary's wife, a puerile doting doctor - and each necessary commonplace of their lives is sketched. Daley's chattering "niceness" drives Clifford Cotton to distraction and, by means of his temporary escape mechanism and the emotional vicissitudes of his wife, Miss Benson has the opportunity to run the gamut in her criticisms of America's standardization, adulteration and prostitution of values. The spiritual vacuousness of the missionaries and the ludicrous justice of the political situation are not omitted as a source of satire. Often Miss Benson flutters, and unrhythmically at that, but always cuts through with incisive candor. "
