When Mrs. Marshall writes about those she truly loves, she cannot be resisted. Her singularly talented first novel ["Brown Girl, Brownstones"] describes the childhood and adolescence of a Brooklyn girl whose parents, both Barbadian immigrants, share an unhappy marriage and a memory of their native island…. To Selina's mother, Silla, the island represents poverty, oppression, and a poetry and beauty that she misses and despises. To her father, Deighton, the island is his heart's desire, and he longs to return to it. When an unexpected legacy gives Deighton two acres of island land, he begins to make plans to return home and build a house. Although he has never succeeded at any of the various trades he has taken up in his efforts to raise himself in life, he believes he can make the money to go home and claim a splendid place for himself in his own country…. [Silla] covets her husband's two acres not for themselves but for the price they will bring, and she schemes to get his inheritance away from him and sell it. The climax of the novel, when the struggle between Deighton and his wife reaches its peak, marks a turning point in the great creative impulse that carries Mrs. Marshall so triumphantly through the first half of her work. From this scene on, although her writing continues to be interesting, it loses in emotion, and therefore, because she is an intensely emotional writer, it loses in power. Selina, who is ten years old when we first meet her, and who remains always at the front and center of the story, is an appealing figure, but even more appealing and memorable are some of the many other figures Mrs. Marshall introduces into this crowded, resounding novel. (p. 179)
A review of "Brown Girl, Brownstones," in The New Yorker (© 1959 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. XXXV, No. 31, September 19, 1959, pp. 179-80.
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