SOURCE: A review of The Middle Kingdom, in Washington Post Book World, May 5, 1991, p. 11.

In the following review, Powers offers a positive assessment of The Middle Kingdom.

Andrea Barrett's third novel, The Middle Kingdom, is the story of Grace Doerring (formerly Hoffmeier, formerly Martone) who grew up fat with a propensity to grow fatter. Grace is familiar to us from both life and literature. Tormented by her mother, messed with by her grandfather, married to a self-absorbed, unhinged artist, then to a self-absorbed, uptight scientist, she has always been a prop in other people's lives. She's the girl who just came along for the ride. And she feeds her empty heart with sweet things.

Things go from bad to worse for Grace until she arrives in China for a scientific conference as “an accompanying person” to her husband. Walter, the “acknowledged leader of the acid-rain world.” At first...