Second Heaven Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Time

Critical Essay by Time

In her second work of fiction [Second Heaven], Best-selling Author Judith Guest … has rearranged the furniture, repapered the bathroom and polished the silver. Unfortunately, these are the only alterations she has made in prose style or personnel….

The members of the trio play discords and harmony based upon Guest's familiar melodies: "As for love … what did anyone ever really know about it? You did what you had to do." The effect is relieved only when the author writes about what is further from her own experience. Gale's sojourn in a county facility for problem children moves with a poignant freshness and a depth of emotion, proving that, in Guest's case, talent advances with the imagination. Away from the shaded streets of suburbia, her gift appears anything but ordinary.

A review of "Second Heaven," in Time, Vol. 120, No. 17, October 25, 1982, p. 82.