Marsha Norman Critical Essay | Critical Review by Janice Mall

Critical Review by Janice Mall

SOURCE: Mall, Janice. Review of Fortune Teller, by Marsha Norman. Los Angeles Times Book Review (21 June 1987): 4.

In the following review, Mall comments that The Fortune Teller combines two disparate plotlines—“a wise, tender story of a woman's relationship with her daughter” and an ineffective police thriller.

It is hard to see why this Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright [Marsha Norman] ('night, Mother) put two plots in her first novel. There is a wise, tender story about the wrenching helplessness of a mother watching her grown child blithely struggle free and head for a fall. Then there's a kidnap thriller that might make a bad TV cop show.

At the center [of The Fortune Teller] is Fay Morgan, a psychic with remarkable clairvoyant powers, who has reared her daughter Lizzie on her earnings telling fortunes in their dingy apartment. She has launched Lizzie like a middle-class butterfly—piano lessons, dancing school, art...
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