[Falling in Place] begins with a mesmerizing portrait of a family coming undone. Unfortunately it takes a turn from which it never recovers, into melodramatic violence. The event—a boy's half-accidental shooting of his hated sister—is perfectly plausible and yet seems perfectly unnecessary as a revelation of the hatreds that animate this grisly world…. The fundamental problem with the book, though, has to do with its author's sensibility, which is reticent to the point of muteness about values. Once again from this novelist we have something more like journalism than fiction.

Phoebe-Lou Adams, "Life and Letters: 'Falling in Place'," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1980, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 245, No. 6, June, 1980, p. 93.