Mary Gordon Critical Essay | Critical Review by Hermione Lee

Critical Review by Hermione Lee

SOURCE: Lee, Hermione. “The Perils of Safety.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4398 (17 July 1987): 765.

In the following review of Temporary Shelter, Lee comments that the best stories in this volume are written in a distinct voice that is both disturbing and comforting, although some are flawed by an overly solemn tone.

Mary Gordon—a remarkable American novelist—has always written about safety, and the perils of safety. “Think of the appeal of sanctuary, the pure shelter”, says Isabel, the heroine of her first novel Final Payments (1978). She has looked after her sick father until she is thirty, in the shelter of his fierce love and faith, admired for her goodness by family priests and neighbours. What to the normal world seems deprivation has to her seemed privilege.

As a child, when I read about the Middle Ages I was fascinated by the idea that there was one automatic safe...
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