SOURCE: Costa, Richard Hauer. “Alison Lurie and the Critics.” In Alison Lurie, pp. 75-83. New York, NY: Twayne, 1992.

In the following essay, Costa provides an overview of critical response to Lurie's work and the formation of her literary reputation, particularly as established in discussion of her two most prominently reviewed and debated novels, The War between the Tates and Foreign Affairs.

The Media's Massage

Reviewers, by and large, have treated Alison Lurie well but superficially, as a sampling of dust-jacket endorsements reflects: poet James Merrill called her “the wisest woman in America”; Truman Capote believed The War between the Tates was a book Jane Austen would enjoy; Gore Vidal crowned her the “Queen Herod of modern fiction.” The War between the Tates brought her a place on the best-seller list, an international audience, and a media image as an irreverent satirist of middle-brow America.

Fortunately for sales but...