Book Reviews
(Some older books have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. Check Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
This new novel by Jane Hamilton aspires to combine a melodramatic soap-opera plot with highly tuned literary writing.... The results are something of a mixed bag: bizarrely clumsy and contrived scenes combined with highly moving moments of exceptional emotional clarity, and a motley cast of characters, ranging from the stereotyped to the dexterously well drawn.... These difficulties are, to some degree, offset by the strengths of Ms. Hamilton's writing: her eye for the emotional detail, her expert manipulation of point of view, her ability to show us Alice's fears and delusions, her need for penance and her yearning for redemption."
Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times