Early on the novel seems unfocused, but it becomes tighter ... This novel shows not so much that Athill should have written more fiction – we wouldn’t want to be without those memoirs – but that she could.
Although the brushwork is light...a well defined first novel sketching in people and places with a sure touch ... While Miss Athill is not as sharp a writer as say Edna O'Brien (the problem perhaps--you identify all this without identifying) she appeals to the same audience which has had very little of this kind to read lately--a woman's novel with a flickering, sympathetic intelligence.
