Diane Johnson | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 2 pages of analysis & critique of Diane Johnson.
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Diane Johnson | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 2 pages of analysis & critique of Diane Johnson.
This section contains 418 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by A. S. Byatt

'No man knows what evil lurks in the secret heart of men. But the Shadow Knows.' So I am told by an American friend, a Valentine Dyall-like voice informed the Americans before every episode of a radio serial. The Shadow was a mastermind, a super-detective, anonymous, ubiquitous. The claim of the mystery-voice is, in itself, ambiguous. So, I take it, is Diane Johnson's novel, which is a cunning cross between the intensely articulate plaint of the under-extended intelligent woman and a conventional mystery, shading into a psychological horror-story….

N. [the narrator], for all her sympathy with, and intermittent admiration of, herself, is a chilly and rebarbative creature. A good feminist might say she was a typical product of a way of life she is feebly trying to rebut. Horrified by housework, blinded by smeary fingers of entirely uncharacterised children on her glasses, she takes to transformational grammar...

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This section contains 418 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by A. S. Byatt
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Critical Essay by A. S. Byatt from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.