SOURCE: Paterson, Judith. “Labors of Love and Loss.” Washington Post Book World, 19, no. 6 (5 February 1989): 6.

In the following review, Paterson examines the elements of classical tragedy in The Book of Ruth.

In a return to be welcomed, love and God seem to be making their way back into fiction. Jane Hamilton's passionate and adroit first novel, The Book of Ruth, seldom shows the hand of the beginner as she unravels the tragedy of a young woman's inability to reconcile her love for her sweet, slightly deranged husband, Ruby, and her loyalty to her mother, May, a mean-spirited woman driven half-mad by a lifetime of emotional deprivation.

Ruth Dahl's troubles begin long before she is born. May's first husband dies in World War II, leaving his bride without hope of happiness. Fifteen years later she marries Ruth's father, Elmer, in as joyless a coupling as you are likely to find...