Diane Johnson is uncannily alert to the subtleties of [her women characters' feelings in Lying Low], and she has no trouble in showing that the reality they inhabit is quite as dangerous as they think it is. (p. 34)

The book is less successful with, or maybe just less interested in, its male characters. Anton Wait's artistic and sexual complexities are mentioned rather than explored, and his marginal presence seems mainly designed to set off the quite different qualities of his sister….

Chuck Sweet, Marybeth's beautiful football player from back home, is, as his name implies, virtually an allegorical character…. [When] Marybeth speculates that he may be "a designated agent of happiness," it sounds as if even she suspects that a puzzling authorial joke is being made.

But if Chuck himself seems a cartoon, Marybeth's reactions to him make sense. Men are good for incidental domestic pleasures, but they...